


The Crooked Kind

by lahdolphin



Series: A Very Potter Haikyuu!! [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Canon-Typical Violence, Coming of Age, Friendship, Gen, Mischief
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-17 02:12:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 56,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11841810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lahdolphin/pseuds/lahdolphin
Summary: Sawamura and Kuroo were determined to help Bokuto and his “feathery little problem,” even if it meant breaking the law and risking their futures to become animagi. (A shameless marauders-inspired fic.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Like everything else in this series, this story can be read as a stand alone piece. But as background: Sawamura is in Gryffindor, Kuroo is in Slytherin, Bokuto is in Hufflepuff, and they've been friends since first year.

It was one of those moments that made Sawamura feel alive, made him feel as young as he actually was, made him feel like he was invincible. Perhaps that feeling was dangerous. Then again, so was sneaking into the restricted section their first night as prefects.

The light of his and Kuroo’s wand illuminated the rows of dusty tomes. Students were only allowed in the restricted section with a note from a professor. If you were under seventh year, you had to be accompanied to the section while you looked for what you needed. They had neither a note nor a guardian, and it was well into the deeper hours of the night.

This—their plan, _the_ plan—was always something they talked about, ever since second year when Kuroo found that book that mentioned animagi. The plan had even earlier roots back in first year when they learned Bokuto was not completely human. But the specifics of the plan? Those started with that simple word: animagi.

Bokuto’s mother had been a nature spirit that, in an attempt to save her species, had a child with a human wizard. Bokuto appeared human most of the time. The rest of the time, he was an owl, a nature spirit. Kuroo called it his “feathery little problem.”

It was lonely for Bokuto. Kuroo and Sawamura could watch him fly, but they could not roam the forests with him.

At least, not yet.

Not until they became animagi and could transform into animals themselves.

“There,” Kuroo said suddenly, moving his wand to the left to light up to bookshelf.

There was no logical order to the restricted section, no dewey decimal classification clearly listing books by authors and numbers. There was magic that was dark, magic that was dangerous; it wasn’t meant to make sense. Sawamura didn’t know if animagi fell under the dark or dangerous category.

The only clue they had to the book's locations was from gossip. The previous year, Bokuto been in his owl form and was snacking in the owlery when two seventh-year Ravenclaws came up, talking about studying for their Transfiguration NEWT. One friend told the other where they could find a book on animagi. It was the only lead they had.

It sounded ridiculous, but so did illegally becoming animagi to roam the forests with their friend that could turn into an owl.

Kuroo waved his wand in front of the bookcase, which was filled with books with animals on the spines. A gold-leafed snake slithered up and down. A leather-etched bird spread its wings. A silver-inked cat blinked curiously at them.

“It’s the only one with words on the spine, right?” Sawamura asked. “What’s the title again?”

“ _Amatao Animo Animato Animagus_.”

Sawamura reached up, stretching up onto the tips of his toes to reach, and pulled down a heavy tome several inches thick. They rested it carefully on a nearby table, reading over the Latin script on the spine and cover. Kuroo lifted the cover and the caw of a crow, the roar of a lion, the hiss of a snake, the bark of a feral dog, and the shriek of a primate screamed loudly at them.

The sound only lasted several seconds, thankfully. When the sounds of animals had stopped, Kuroo began to flip through the pages, looking at the chapter titles. There was one on the author, another on the history of animagi, and two whole chapters on what could go wrong during the transformation process. There were gruesome pictures of people stuck between human and animal, pictures of people with their insides turned out, pictures of people with animal heads and human bodies. Sawamura felt his stomach flipping at the drawings.

They knew it was dangerous. It was illegal to become an animagi for underage wizards and it highly unadvisable for people without a mentor to guide them. All animagi had to register with the Ministry or face going to Azkaban, but they couldn’t tell the ministry they were animagi without admitting they became them illegally.

Finally, at the top of a page, they read:

_Chapter 5. How to Become an Animagi._

“Let’s go,” Sawamura said.

Kuroo was right there with him. He closed the book and tucked it under his arm, concealing it with the flowing excess fabric of his robe’s sleeve.

They swiftly made their way out of the restricted section to the main library, slowly closing the heavy gated door behind them so it did not make a sound.

Just outside of the restriction section, they found a familiar snowy owl. Bokuto was perched on the sign that said _do not enter_ in large, intimidating cursive. Sawamura could hear the words in the librarian’s voice.

Owl-Bokuto tilted his head at them then flew off the sign. In midair, he began to shift, his wings elongated and becoming the black sleeves of his robes, his yellow eyes growing, and his feathers turning into strangely colored black and white stripped hair.

“What the hell was that sound?” Bokuto asked, bug-eyed, or owl-eyed. His eyebrows were still feathery and far too long, far too owl-like, a sign of panic.

“The book,” Kuroo said. He shifted his arm slightly, letting Boktuo see the edge of the tome.

“You got it?” Bokuto asked, clearly surprised.

“C’mon,” Sawamura said urgently. “We need to get back to our dorms.”

The three began to walk, Bokuto in between them.

Kuroo grinned. “Well, _we_ don’t have to hurry back, Sawamura. We’re prefects now. We’re allowed out whenever we want.”

Bokuto groaned and tugged at his hair. “Yes, I know you’re both prefects and I’m not! Can you stop be annoying about it?”

“Never,” Kuroo said with a wicked grin.

Sawamura sighed. “It’s a serious job, Kuroo. You can’t abuse your power. Besides, we’re technically only allowed out when we have rounds.”

“It was your idea to tell the librarian we were supposed to have rounds in the library tonight. That’s way more an abuse of power than what I had planned.”

“What _did_ you have planned?” Sawamura asked, not sure he wanted to know.

Bokuto suddenly tossed an arm around each of their shoulders.

“Well, thanks!” Bokuto said with a wide smile. “I can’t believe you guys would actually do this for me.”

Kuroo tossed his free arm across Bokuto’s back, which had gotten wider over the summer again. Bokuto was going to be a terror on the Quidditch Pitch this year. Thank Merlin he was not a beater.

“You’d do the same for us, mate,” Kuroo said.

 

* * *

 

Kuroo kept the book, saying he would lock it into the chest in his dorm, which only opened in response to his bloodline. Purebloods had the strangest heirlooms. At least the chest opened to Kuroo. Maybe his ancestors never thought someone would dare break their blood purity. They had clearly not anticipated Kuroo’s pureblood father and his muggle mother.

Sawamura slept like a dead man that night, only waking when his roommates shook him and said they had thirty minutes before their first class started. He briefly considered going back to sleep. He hadn’t gotten back to his room until after midnight and the anxiety of preparing for their little heist had been driving him crazy.

Sawamura did not skip classes, but he also did not break into the restricted section at ungodly hours on a regular basis. He supposed missing the first day of the year would be bad—worse considering he was a prefect now.

Deciding he should abide by as many rules as possible if he was going to be breaking just as many, Sawamura quickly dressed, ran to the Great Hall, and filled his plate with food.

At the Hufflepuff table, Bokuto was sleeping on Shirofuku’s shoulder while she shoved pastries into her mouth at an alarming speed. Sawamura hoped she did not choke again.

Kuroo was wide-awake at the Slytherin table, talking to Daishou of all people. Just the idea of that guy left a sour taste in Sawamura’s mouth, but it was nothing a bit of apple juice and French toast could not fix.

Sawamura had long ago accepted that Kuroo and Daishou were friends, but he didn’t particularly like it. Daishou was everything that was wrong with a Slytherin while Kuroo was everything that was good about a Slytherin.

Sawamura thought Kuroo selectively chose which bits of Daishou to accept, ignoring the ones that were distasteful and keeping the rest so he could stomach calling Daishou his friend. Sawamura would never dare say that to Kuroo, who was probably smart enough to realize what he was doing but did not care because, to Kuroo, it didn’t matter why you were friends with someone.

After filling their stomachs with food, Sawamura, Bokuto, and Kuroo reconvened at the exit of the Great Hall and made their way up the stairs the Charms Corridor for their first class of fifth year.

“So I was looking at the book last night,” Kuroo said. He pinched the bridge of his nose, looking more tired than Sawamura had thought from afar, with nasty bags under his eyes. “Read the whole thing, actually.”

“How are you awake?” Sawamura asked.

“I found some invigoration draught leftover from finals last year. It was seriously sour. Anyways, I figured out a schedule for the process.”

“Yeah?” Bokuto said excitedly.

“Yeah,” Kuroo confirmed, oddly grim. “The minimum amount of time is three months, which is honestly better than we had hoped.”

“And the max?” Sawamura asked.

“Depends,” Kuroo said. “By the end of the year? There’re a lot of circumstantial things that need to happen. We’ll need lightning at one point and we have to bathe the potions in the light of the full moon for an hour twice. Before that, we need to keep a mandrake leaf in our mouths for a month. It’s the last ingredient to a potion before the second moon-thing.”

“Sounds… fun.”

“No one said it was going to be easy or fun,” Kuroo said and Sawamura knew that too. “But before we do anything else, we need to find some potion ingredients. I didn’t even recognize some of them.”

Bokuto scratched his head. “Can you write all of this down? I’m not going to remember any of this.”

Kuroo reached into the inner pocket of his robe and handed both of them a rather thick scroll. “Before breakfast, I bugged my Quidditch captain for match dates. I know we haven’t made the teams yet this year, but I figured we’d be fine. Well, maybe not Bo.”

Bokuto shouted, “Hey!” and Kuroo laughed.

“I’m joking, mate,” Kuroo said with an easy-going smile. “You’re definitely going to make your team again. Anyways, match dates are on there, so once we start brewing, we can plan who watches the potion. There are ingredients that need to be added at very precise times.”

Sawamura tucked the scroll into his bag without looking at it. “Kuroo, can I read that book too?”

Kuroo nodded. “Let’s do it outside. The screaming draws a bit of attention.”

“How did you open it last night?”

“Silencing charm, but it was louder than I thought. I don’t want to know what my roommates thought I was doing.”

They walked into the Charms classroom, which had diagrams of wand techniques all around the room and several rows of tables with wooden chairs. The three of them sat in the middle of the room, a compromise for their preferred seating areas. Kuroo liked the front, Sawamura liked the middle, and Bokuto liked the back. This way they could still sit together without too much complaint. Sawamura was certainly happy with the arrangement. 

The two empty seats to Sawamura’s left were filled shortly after they sat down. A girl from his own house sat next to him. Beside her was Shimizu from Hufflepuff.

Sawamura thought Shimizu was interesting. She could see the dead and not just the ghosts that chose to stay behind. She was a medium, a link between this world and the next. It was a bit creepy and she was quiet, but she wrote really good notes and never minded sharing them with Sawamura. She was quite beautiful, too, which never hurt anyone.

Sawamura looked at the girl from his house more closely, wondering why he did not recognize her. She had to be his year if she was in this class and he thought he knew everyone in his year, or at least their face and name.

The girl had short hair and large, round, brown eyes. She quietly pulled out a clean scroll for notes, an ink well, and a fluffy white quill.

Kuroo frowned and nudged Sawamura, who turned and looked at him.

“What?” Sawamura asked.

“Way to stare,” Bokuto said. He leaned across Kuroo towards Sawamura and whispered, “You into Michimiya or something?”

Sawamura looked back at the girl and saw the prefect badge on her breast. He looked back up at her and saw that her face was slightly red.

“You cut your hair last night,” Sawamura said, feeling rather dumb.

All of the prefects had met on the train yesterday, including them, the newly appointed fifth year prefects for Gryffindor. But on the train, Michimiya had had her normal long hair. It used to come down to her shoulder blades. She wore it up in a messy bun in Potions so it did not slid into her potion like that time in second year.

Michimiya nodded. “Yup. I made up my mind that I was going to try out for the Quidditch team this year. Long hair gets in my way when it’s windy, even when it’s braided, so I thought I’d cut it.” She twirled a slightly longer strand around her finger. “It’s kind of stupid now that I think about it.”

“It’s not stupid.” He paused. “It looks… nice?”

Kuroo snorted. Bokuto snickered in his hand.

Sawamura frowned, confused. Did they think it looked bad? It didn’t. It was just hair. It was just Michimiya.

 

* * *

 

While Bokuto was in Divination, which he was surprisingly good at (“Because he makes it all up,” Kuroo joked often, which Bokuto confirmed shamelessly), Kuroo and Sawamura found an empty courtyard and opened the book. Sawamura looked around as the book roared to life quite literally, but no one was there to stare at them.

The book was gruesome, now that Sawamura had a chance to look at it. Sawamura had spent many hours in the last two years reading human transfiguration books, back before they became serious about becoming animagi, back when it was a wild joke as they snuck out with Bokuto to watch him transform in the dead of night. Sawamura read books about spells and transfigurations gone awry, but nothing quite like this.

The pages were filled with misshapen humans, stuck between human and animal. Skin turned into scale or into feathers that poked through the skin and caused blood to run down your arms. Bulging eyes, missing limbs, extra limbs—it was truly horrific, far worse than the books Sawamura had read in the past.

The potion they needed to brew was complicated, but the book was well written and the instructions were clear. Potions was not Kuroo or Sawamura’s best subject, least of all Bokuto’s, but between the three of them, they could manage to brew it, though it would not be easy.

The first mistake often happened during the potion brewing, according to the text. People thought the month they had to keep the mandrake leaf in their mouth was a calendar month, but it actually followed the full moon, making it slightly shorter. They had to keep the leaf in their mouth from one full moon to the next, down to the exact hour.

The next mistake came after the majority of the potion had been consumed. They had to say a spell twice a day, every day, until a lightning storm came and they could drink the last of the potion. People sometimes forgot to cast the spell. If they continued on with the process after failing to cast the spell, the results were dreadful.  

The itinerary Kuroo made was extensive and Sawamura double-checked every date with what was in the book. Kuroo’s instructions even had the steps to make the potion. It was correct, as far as Sawamura could tell.

They needed several hard to find ingredients, like dew that hadn’t seen sun or human feet. Kuroo had scribbled _where to get?_ next to the ingredient, writing it next to several others as well.

They decided to gather the potion ingredients before doing anything else.

They sat in the warm grass of the western courtyard with their shirts untucked and ties loose for the remainder of the day. After Divination, Bokuto joined them, pulling jelly slugs and peppermint imps out of his bag to share.

One of the scrolls was spread out in front of them and they huddled around it, blocking out any curious eyes. Kuroo had a quill tucked behind his ear and Bokuto fiddled some sort of tiny bone in his fingers.

“So we’ll brew in the first floor girls’ bathroom,” Kuroo said, finalizing the decision.

“The _haunted_ first floor girls’ bathroom,” Bokuto said, clearly still freaked out by the idea.

Kuroo gave him a look. “Bo, the entire castle has ghosts. It’s all haunted.”

“But that bathroom is _really_ haunted! Toilets explode all the time in that bathroom!”

Sawamura sighed. “Bokuto, really, don’t worry. Moaning Myrtle is nice as long as you respect her.”

“Why should I respect someone that blows up toilets?” Bokuto asked, voice cracking like a squawking bird.

“Moving on,” Kuroo said loudly. “These are the ingredients we don’t have.”

“I bet we can find the dew in the forest,” Bokuto said. “I’ve seen a few caves while flying around. And I’m still not happy about the bathroom.”

“We can get the mandrake leaf from the second year Herbology greenhouse,” Sawamura said.

“We’re not talking about the bathroom anymore, are we?” Bokuto asked.

Kuroo took the quill out from behind his ear and began to write all of this down. He tapped an ingredient Sawamura did not recognize and said, “The biggest issue is this species of mushroom, the chameleon toadstool. They’re only found in subtropic areas. Even the greenhouses won’t have them.”

“How do you know that?” Sawamura asked.

“I asked Suguru. He has a key to all of the greenhouses, even the professor’s private greenhouse. He knows all of the plants housed at Hogwarts and said there’s no subtropic mushrooms. So the chameleon toadstool isn’t there.”

Sawamura and Bokuto stared at him, confused by the statement.

“Daishou has a key to the greenhouses?” Bokuto asked, skeptical.

Kuroo shrugged. “He crosses poisonous plants to make hybrids. He uses them to make antidotes for poisons.”

That seemed to clash with everything Sawamura knew about Daishou. Kuroo had to be mistaken. Daishou was surely making poisons for some nefarious purpose. There was no way devious, slimy Daishou Suguru was making antidotes for fun.

But Sawamura kept his mouth shut. So did Bokuto. Kuroo knew how they felt about Daishou—how everyone felt about Daishou—and there was no point beating a dead griffin.

Kuroo had already defended Daishou once in the past. Sawamura was not eager to repeat that performance.

“So if they don’t grow here,” Sawamura said, “how are we going to get them? Can we order them?”

“Without drawing attention to ourselves?” Kuroo scoffed. “No way. It’d have to go through the ministry. I looked at some of my potions books and apparently these things are only used in the worst potions. The potions aren’t even named in the books they’re that bad. All I know is this mushroom is blacklisted.”

“Could you ask Daishou?” Bokuto asked.

Kuroo gave him a level look. “No. He’d figure it out, or want in. He’s one of the best in our year at Potions besides Michimiya—she actually is the best.”

Bokuto grinned at Sawamura, who furrowed his brow.

“Hey, you can ask Michimiya and see if she has any of these mushrooms!” Bokuto suggested. He waggled his eyebrows.

“Why would she have something like that?” Sawamura asked. “She’s not making any illegal potions.”

“You don’t know that,” Kuroo said. “She could be super shady. She cut her hair. She loved her hair. I sense she’s getting rebellious.”

“It was for Quidditch,” Sawamura said, not understanding his point. Quidditch and hair had nothing to do with brewing illegal potions. He tapped the parchment scroll loudly. “How are we getting these mushrooms?”

Kuroo paused. “Suguru had an idea. I didn’t tell him what we needed, only that it was rare. He figured that if anyone on grounds has them, it’s the Potions Master. We could steal from Nekomata.”

Nekomata was a wrinkly old man with a smile that made Sawamura nervous. He was head of Slytherin, which didn’t help. Not all Slytherins were like Kuroo. Some were like Daishou. Some were worse, believe it or not.

“Breaking into the restricted section was hard enough,” Bokuto said. “Peeves screamed while chasing us for four floors. Four floors! And the librarian barely believed you guys. If she figures out neither of you have an owl, she’s gonna wonder why the hell I was on your shoulder, Kuroo.”

“I can do it on rounds,” Kuroo said. “Suguru’s thought about this for awhile.”

“You mean, he’s been planning to steal from Nekomata for awhile,” Sawamura said, not asking.

“Don’t judge him. We’re thinking of doing the same thing right now. If we want to do this, we need to get these mushrooms.”

Sawamura sighed and rubbed at his eyes. He was going to have a migraine after this.

“We always have partners on rounds,” Sawamura pointed out.

“Who?” Bokuto asked. “Like, anyone? You could just go with Kuroo.”

“We’re assigned at random, but it’s usually with the other prefect from your year in your house,” Kuroo said. “The head boy and girl decide. We may be paired up eventually, but who knows when that’ll be.”

“Ask the head boy and girl, then,” Bokuto said simply.

The head girl was a quiet Hufflepuff who seemed to be very by-the-book. Unless they had a reason, Sawamura doubted she would put them together, especially since everyone knew they were friends. It wasn’t every day a Slytherin and Gryffindor were as good as friends as Sawamura and Kuroo were.

That left the head boy. His name was Arashi. He was a Ravenclaw and gave off a bit of a bad-boy vibe. Sawamura wondered how someone like him became head boy at all. Arashi seemed to be more relaxed and seemed more lenient. He showed Sawamura and Michimya the routes prefects took around the castle and grounds, cracking jokes about where students snuck off to snog.

If they asked, Arashi may put Sawamura and Kuroo together for rounds, especially if they made a joke about how being with a friend would make the task more enjoyable on nights when no one was out making trouble. (They would be the ones making trouble, but no one needed to know that.)

“Maybe,” Sawamura said skeptically. “Arashi might let us.”

“I’ll talk to Suguru and see if maybe he can do it by himself if I keep my rounds partner distracted,” Kuroo said. “I have a feeling that if we ask Arashi for a favor, we’re going to owe him and I don’t like owing people.”

Sawamura and Bokuto nodded. Kuroo was a judge good of character—Daishou excluded—and Sawamura trusted Kuroo’s gut instinct.

“Okay, what about this one?” Sawamura asked, pointing to another ingredient.

Kuroo nodded as well, explaining their plan for a particular type of root they needed.

 

* * *

 

Classes were more intense than ever. For four years, Sawamura listened to fifth years complain about OWLs and a small part of him always thought they were exaggerating for sympathy. They weren’t.

Sawamura had never spent so much time in the library and common room, hunched over his three-foot History of Magic essay and looking over their animagi notes. At least all of the fifth years were suffering together. The Gryffindor fifth years often holed up in the common room to review assignments the night before they were due, which was quite helpful.

It did not help that he also had his duties as a prefect. He spent at least three nights a week on rounds, walking the castle in a set pattern. So far, he had only been paired with Michimiya, though the head boy had accompanied them the first few times to make sure they knew the route.

They talked about classes and their favorite Quidditch teams and how their summers were. Michimiya was kind enough to bring invigoration draughts that she brewed in her cabinet to help keep them awake.

He had never really talked to her before, not like he was now. Looking back, he didn’t know why. It was easy and far from unenjoyable.

Luckily, just a few weeks into the term, he had a break from classes and prefect duties, courtesy of Bokuto.

Sawamura felt very proud that he finally remembered Bokuto’s birthday. He was notoriously bad with dates. He had known Sugawara his whole life, but somehow still forgot his birthday every year. Sawamura blamed it on the fact that dates did not mean much to him. Days of the weeks were more important to students. Individual dates only mattered for assignments, like the Potions plan due tomorrow that he would have to wake up early to do.

Bokuto’s sixteenth birthday was Sawamura and Kuroo’s excuse for ignoring their assignments for the night and taking a break from their animagi plans to sneak into the kitchen and gather bottles of butterbeer and all of Bokuto’s favorite foods. They carried their spoils in their bags through the basement, up the steps, and outside, where Shirofuku Yukie from Hufflepuff was waiting for them.

Shirofuku was arguably Bokuto’s best friend, second to Sawamura and Kuroo. She ate nearly as much as him and was one of the few people that could bring him up from a bad mood instead of making it worse. She kept him in line like Sawamura and Kuroo never could. It was frightening sometimes, actually.

Once she saw them, she stepped away from the wall she was leaning on and walked towards them.

“Koutarou is in the library. We were studying, but I told him I forgot my book. He’s pretty bummed out. He thinks you all forgot his birthday.”

Sawamura glared at Kuroo. “I told you waiting until the afternoon was a bad idea.”

“It’s not like we could down fire whiskey at eight in the morning in the middle of the Great Hall," Kuroo replied. 

Sawamura’s eyes widened. “Fire whiskey?”

He didn’t know if he liked the sound of that. They weren’t of age and they were out in the open.

Kuroo grinned. “Suguru got it from a sixth year. I have to take notes for him for History of Magic for two weeks, but it’s worth it.”

Sawamura had never had fire whiskey. He wondered if Kuroo had, or if Bokuto had.

He had seen seventh years and some sixth years drink it after Gryffindor won matches, or during the rare house parties that took place in the common room to relieve school-related stress near exam time. It was always fun to watch them get drunk and make fools of themselves.

Then he thought of Kuroo and Bokuto, both already outrageous in their own ways, with alcohol.

Merlin, this was going to be quit the mess, wasn’t it?

“I’ll grab him from the library and bring him,” Shirofuku said. “You’re still doing it at that willow tree by the lake, yeah?”

Sawamura and Kuroo nodded. Shirofuku waved and hurried off, moving faster than Sawamura had ever seen her. She was usually like a sloth, moving only for food, or to yell at Bokuto when he hadn’t given back her notes yet.

Sawamura and Kuroo headed to the willow tree down by the lake. It was cool out, albeit a little humid, like it may rain the next morning. But the moon and stars were bright, no clouds in sight, making it easy to see. Most students were inside this time of night on a weekday and prefects wouldn’t be by until after eleven, giving them a few solid hours by themselves.

They set out a large blanket under the drooping branches of the willow tree, setting out bottles of butterbeer and two bottles of fire whiskey along with several plates of food. It wasn’t a banquet, but it would be enough to fill their stomachs.

“Oh, almost forgot,” Sawamura said, reaching into his bag to pull out a small tin. “Suga make cupcakes.”

“Bless Sugawara for making me fat,” Kuroo said, putting his hands together in mock prayer.

They had just finished setting up when they saw Bokuto and Shirofuku coming down the hill. Sawamura and Kuroo sat on the blanket, waiting. Sawamura eyed the bottles of fire whiskey nervously, knowing it was a bad idea but not arguing, actually feeling himself get a little excited.

Bokuto came running down the hill, arms stretched out wide like he just might jump and hug them, but he didn’t. Sawamura was relieved. It would not have been the first time if he had chosen to do that.

“This is awesome!” Bokuto shouted. “I thought you guys forgot. Like really, honestly forgot.”

“Never,” Kuroo said, smiling. “Happy birthday, Bo.”

“Happy birthday,” Sawamura echoed.

Shirofuku, who had continued to walk down the hill like a sane person, finally reached the bottom. She squeezed Bokuto’s arm and said, “Don’t drink and fly,” and then headed back to the castle.

Sawamura and Kuroo gave Bokuto a curious look.

“You told her?” Kuroo asked, shocked.

Sawamura had never heard of this. As far as he knew, the only people at Hogwarts that knew about Bokuto’s feathery little problem were Kuroo and Sawamura.

Bokuto nodded, completely unbothered and unconcerned. “Yeah. Told her in third year. I was kind of down ‘cause it had been raining for a while and I hate flying in the rain. You know how I get jittery and itchy when I can’t fly? She noticed something was up so I told her.”

“Are you two a thing?” Kuroo asked bluntly, leaning back on his hands.

Bokuto shook his head, laughing like that was ridiculous. Sawamura didn’t think it was ridiculous. He was horrible at noticing these types of things, but with Shirofuku and Bokuto, it had seemed obvious. Apparently it wasn’t. Sawamura was worse at this kind of thing than he thought.

Kuroo made a small sound of surprise. At least Sawamura wasn’t alone.

Bokuto sat down on the blanket, looking at the spread of drinks and food, his eyes eventually landing on the fire whiskey.

“Are you two getting me drunk?” Bokuto asked, reaching for a bottle. He unscrewed the lid and took a whiff. “I’ve never been drunk.”

“First time for everything,” Kuroo said. “And you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“Oh, I want to,” Bokuto assured.

“Have _you_ been drunk?” Sawamura asked, looking at Kuroo.

Kuroo shrugged. “Slytherins party a lot.”

“You’re so freakin’ cool,” Bokuto said. “Have you kissed people and stuff too?”

“And stuff?” Kuroo asked, amused.

“Y’know. _Stuff_. Snogging and touching girls’ under their shirts. I haven’t even kissed a girl, but girls talk about you like you’re so cool. I heard that last year, you snogged this sixth year in the library and had your hand under her skirt when the librarian caught you.”

Bokuto took a long swig from the bottle of fire whisky. When he pulled the bottle away from his lips, he shook and cringed, making a horrible, scrunched up sour face.

Kuroo laughed, falling onto his back, craning his head to the side to watch Bokuto take another swig with a similar reaction.

When Bokuto regained himself, he asked Kuroo, “Have you? We won’t tell.”

Kuroo smirked playfully. “Jealous?”

“Yes! What was it like?”

Kuroo placed his hands behind his head like pillows. “Trust me, I’d tell you if I’d done that stuff.”

“But you just said—so you haven’t done _anything_?” Bokuto took another long sip of the fire whiskey with a similar reaction. He was dedicated, that’s for sure. “Not even a kiss?”

“Girls aren’t really something I think about.”

“Seriously?” Bokuto sounded completely shocked. “Man, it’s all I’ve thought about since summer. Well, that and Quidditch. And the animagi thing, I guess. Have you thought about girls, Sawamura?”

“Is this what we’ve come to?” Kuroo asked. “Drinking and talking about girls?”

“Yes,” Bokuto said, no shame. “Sawamura?”

Sawamura shrugged. “I don’t know. Sometimes.”

Bokuto smiled. “Knew it!”

“Probably Michimiya,” Kuroo said, grinning.

Sawamura frowned. “Why her?”

“Seriously?” Kuroo asked in disbelief.

When Sawamura reached for a butterbeer, Bokuto stopped him by shoving the fire whiskey into his hands.

“It’s my birthday,” Bokuto said when Sawamura looked hesitantly at the bottle.

Sawamura sighed, not even putting up a fight. “Okay. It’s your birthday.”

The burn of the alcohol was exciting and foreign. Sawamura didn’t mind it as much as he thought he would and took a sip for several seconds before releasing the bottle. Kuroo and Bokuto whooped and hollered.

“Give me some,” Kuroo said, sitting up and holding out his hand.

Then Bokuto reached for the second bottle and Sawamura knew this would be a night he would likely forget yet remember forever.

 

* * *

 

“Merlin’s fucking pants,” Bokuto muttered the next morning in Charms. “Hangovers suck.”

“Don’t speak,” Kuroo said, resting his forehead against the table.

“If Suga finds out, he’s never letting us live this down,” Sawamura said. His head was pounding. His mouth was so dry. His stomach was about to throw a revolution.

“I think he’ll be pissed we didn’t invite him,” Kuroo said.

Bokuto laughed loudly. Sawamura and Kuroo kicked him.

 

* * *

 

Their scores on their OWLs determined what classes they would take the next two years, their NEWT classes. It was hard to ignore the exams when the professors spent the first few weeks giving them assignment after assignment, the essays longer than ever and charms far more complicated.

He was sure Kuroo had some ridiculously intense plan set up so he could make all his marks. Kuroo was too ambitious for his own good sometimes and was a bit of a bookworm, though he didn’t look it.

Bokuto would probably wait until the last minute, or would only study when the panic set in at random points in the upcoming months.

Sawamura thought he might just revise by himself until Azumane propositioned him.

“Do you want to study together?” Azumane asked on their way to Ancient Runes.

Azumane was certainly a friend, not to the extent that Kuroo and Bokuto were, but Sawamura would not hesitate to hang out with him or study together.

“Why me?” Sawamura asked.

Azumane rubbed the back of his head. His hair was getting awfully long. “I know you’re good at Transfiguration, which I’m not so good at it. But I’m good at History of Magic, which I know you struggle with. I was thinking we could help each other, just a a small session or two every week.”

“Sure,” Sawamura agreed, not needing to give it much thought. “How about we start after Quidditch tryouts? I’m guessing you’re trying out again too, right?”

Azumane nodded. Last year, he had made the Hufflepuff team as a fearsome beater.

Sawamura, Kuroo, and Bokuto had also all made their house teams last year. Kuroo was a beater. Sawamura and Bokuto were both chasers. This year, they were all trying out again.

 

* * *

 

Tryouts came later that week. The morning of, Sawamura found Michimiya at breakfast with Shirofuku from Hufflepuff and Mika from Ravenclaw. Girls seemed to cross the house-table barriers more easily, especially at breakfast on weekends when most of the castle was still asleep. The barriers were never something Sawamura, Kuroo, and Bokuto cared about.  

Sawamura sat some ways away from the girls, filling his plate with eggs and toast, careful not to eat too much. He could still hear the girls, wishing he couldn’t. He felt like he was eavesdropping.

“You’re going to be fine,” Mika said reassuringly. “I’ve seen you play. You’re really good!”

“I wish you weren’t joining the house team,” Shirofuku said. “That way you could keep playing with me.”

Michimiya laughed. “You don’t even need teammates, Yukie. You catch the snitch so fast it doesn’t matter what the score is. And I can keep playing with you. There’re no rules against it, are there?”

“Don’t think so,” Shirofuku said.

Sawamura frowned, wondering what they were talking about. When would Michimiya have been on a team with her? There were only four teams, one for each house, and none of them had been on the house teams last year. Besides, they were in different houses.

Sawamura was a chaser last year for Gryffindor. He would have remembered playing against them.

Suddenly, Michimiya slapped her cheeks so hard Sawamura could hear it. She nodded, determined.

He ate his eggs and toast, eventually joined by Kuroo, who was quiet as he methodically spread jelly over his toast.

Kuroo sometimes got like this, serious and silent. He was like this before a match, or when they had a big test and he needed to cram for, or sometimes before Dueling Club met when he was scheduled to duel.

Kuroo was a cunning opponent, so cunning that Sawamura sometimes wished they were in the same house. He wished the same for Bokuto, too, who had been on his house team since third year. Bokuto was a monster of his own; he’d probably be captain next year.

At the same time, having strong people on your team meant you couldn’t play against them and that was half the fun.

Sawamura stood up to go down to the Pitch, but Kuroo did not follow.

“I’ll be down there later,” Kuroo said. “I’m waiting for Kenma. He’s trying out for Ravenclaw’s team and I want to make sure he eats something.”

That was news to Sawamura, who just nodded. “Don’t miss your tryout time.”

Kuroo grinned. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

“It’s hard to tell sometimes.”

Kuroo laughed as Sawamura stepped away from the table and began to make his way down to the Pitch. He somehow found himself following after Michimiya, Mika, and Shirofuku, who was hugging Michimiya’s arm and resting her head on the Gryffindor’s shoulder. Sawamura wondered how her jaw didn’t knock into her head with every step.

The girls didn’t seem to notice him until they all reached the broom shed. The shed was bigger on the inside thanks to a simple spell. Sawamura followed the numbered racks until he found his broom. His broom was a light colored wood, the shine of varnish long since worn off, with gold rings tying the darker twigs together.

He curiously looked over to see what Michimiya’s broom looked like. It was a sturdy model, a few years old, with dark wood and shorter twigs than his own that made turning easier but made her a bit slower overall.

It was a nice day—not too warm, with no humidity to warp the wood of their brooms, and a clear sky. The sun would be annoying at certain angles, but he had charmed goggles that removed the glare.

The Pitch was firm and familiar beneath his feet. He nodded at the Gryffindor captain that stood in the center of the Pitch; they had been teammates last year, but Sawamura knew that did not guarantee him a spot.

All three chasers from last year’s team, himself included, were trying out again. There were several others trying for the three spots. He was not a shoe-in. He had to show them all that deserved to be on the team again.

Michimiya stood next to him, looking far more nervous without her friends by her side. She tossed her broom from hand to hand, obviously a nervous habit, but Sawamura could only think how comfortable she looked with her broom. She had clearly been flying it for a while.

Sawamura wondered if he should say something to her. He decided not to. He wouldn’t know what to say even if he felt comfortable doing it. They weren’t friends, not really. Acquaintance was a better word. They had begun to talk more now that they often had rounds together, but it was almost always about classes.

The Pitch got much louder when fourth years Tanaka and Nishinoya arrived.

Nishinoya greeted Sawamura with a slap on the back. A year before Sawamura even joined the team, Nishinoya joined as keeper and had held the spot since.

Tanaka was someone Sawamura recognized from the common room, one of Nishinoya’s roommates and partners in crime, but he hadn’t tried out for the team before. Sawamura had to take ten points between the two of them and their gang for setting the common room carpet on fire just the other night.

“Ready, Sawamura?” Nishinoya asked.

“As ready as I can be,” Sawamura said. “It’s a good day to fly.”

“That’s what Ryuu said! He’s gonna be one of our beaters this year.”

“You sound really confident in him.”

“Ryuu is _awesome_! He’s totally going to kick some ass today.”

Tanaka and Nishinoya high-fived. Sawamura laughed and wondered if Tanaka was as good as his friend said. It’d be nice to have a strong beater.

Last year, the Slytherin beaters had completely demolished Gryffindor’s and Azumane from Hufflepuff had clipped Sawamura’s broomsticks more than once. Kuroo had been unbearably cocky for days after the Slytherin beaters out powered Gryffindor’s, even if Gryffindor had won the match in the end.

The captain blew his whistle and they gathered around.

 

* * *

 

Sawamura sat in one of the plush chairs in front of the fire in the Gryffindor common room, waiting for the captain to post the tryout results. Instead of doing his Arithmancy homework, he was recalling tryouts.

He had flown well, well enough to feel confident that he would have a spot. He wasn’t cocky about these things, but he was realistic. He scored several goals, pulled two good feints, and worked well with his makeshift team. What surprised him was how well he worked with Michimiya. It was easy to communicate with her and easy to toss to her and accept her passes.

She was not the best—neither was he, not by a long shot—but she was skilled. She was comfortable on her broom and did not seem intimidated, even when an opposing chaser flew straight at her to shake her off course. Her opponent had to pull away before crashing into Michimiya, who didn’t react until the match was over.

“I thought she was going to ram me!” Michimiya had said, breathing heavily, eyes wide. “I was about to swerve! Thank Merlin she moved before I did. I messed up a lot already…”

He was so deep in thought that he jumped when someone sat on the sofa nearby. It was Michimiya in her pajamas, a mismatching t-shirt and baggy Gryffindor-red pants. She had her Potions book with her. She almost always had a potions book with her, either the one assigned to the class or one she found herself.

He glanced at her and her eyes shifted away to the cover of her book.

“You’re good at Potions, right?” Sawamura asked.

She went to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, seemed to remember she no longer had long hair, and then scratched the side of her nose.

“My marks are good,” she said modestly, not quite meeting his eyes. Her cheeks were slightly pink. “And I like to brew for fun. Mika keeps saying I should sell my invigoration draught during finals week, that’d I’d make a fortune.”

“You should,” Sawamura said. Those potions were just about the only reason he could stay awake during rounds. She smiled slightly. “I was wondering… Do you have a chameleon toadstool, or know where I could get one?”

Michimiya's smile turned to a frown. “Why would you need that? Sawamura, those are only used in nasty potions. What are you making?”

He realized very quickly that asking had been a mistake. She was the best in their year at Potions. Of course she would know what kind of potions the mushroom was used in. Even if she had it—why would she?—she would want to know what he was making.

He was so very, very stupid.

What would Bokuto do? No. Don’t do that. Don’t even think about what Bokuto would do.

What would Kuroo do?

“My friend Suga collects different plants and things,” Sawamura lied.

He didn’t like lying. He was bad at it and it felt wrong. Kuroo could easily lie in the right circumstances.

“Suga? Is he in our house?”

“Sugawara. And ah, no, he’s my neighbor, but he goes Beauxbatons. His mom went there so he was accepted…” He tapped his quill on his Arithmancy homework, wishing he could stab it into his neck and get out of this situation. “I’m guessing you don’t have one?”

“No,” she said, seeming to buy it. “Sorry. It’s an ingredient in a lot of nasty potions so they’re not easy to get. I’ve wanted one, though! They change color and properties depending on what environment they’re in. If they’re in an aqueous environment, they start to look like seaweed or algae—it depends on the salt concentration. If they’re on grass, they look like a rock. Professor Nekomata let me into his ingredient room once and he pointed it out to me. He keeps his in a glass jar and they look like quartz.”

She reached up and began to push at her short hair. Her face was bright red now.

“Sorry for rambling.”

Sawamura frowned. “No, it’s interesting. You’re… really smart.”

She flicked her eyes away, looking down at her Potions book.

“Hey!” the Quidditch captain called. “I put up the names.”

Sawamura stood up quickly, followed by Michimiya, and they made it to the bulletin board before anyone else. There, under the title chaser, were their names.

 

* * *

 

At breakfast, Sawamura, Kuroo, and Bokuto all reported to one another that they had made their respective house teams and their teams would be the ones to win the Quidditch House Cup. After a flurry of insults between Bokuto and Kuroo, Kuroo told them Kozume Kenma had been made Ravenclaw’s seeker.

Sawamura didn’t know much about Kozume. He knew he was Kuroo’s childhood friend through some strange string of events and that the two were completely different. Kozume had relatively long black hair and easily faded into the background, while it was hard to ignore Kuroo. Kuroo was clearly a people person, whereas Kozume was always by himself. People from other houses usually didn’t like Slytherins, but Kuroo seemed to be a strange exception to a lot of people.

“By the way, I talked to Michimiya about the mushroom,” Sawamura said.

Kuroo stared at him over a basket of pumpkin muffins. “Are you an idiot?”

Sawamura frowned. “You’ve been talking to Daishou about this!”

“I told you, I’ve never told him the exact ingredient. He’d figure it out. Merlin, Michimiya’s better at Potions than him. Did you call it by name?”

“I lied and told her Suga collects plants.”

“What did she tell you?” Boktuo asked. “Does she have it?”

“No, but she said Nekomata does. Apparently, it’s called the chameleon toadstool because it changes its appearance in different environments. She said he keeps it in a glass jar so it looks like quartz.”

“How does that help?” Bokuto asked slowly, very confused. “Am I missing something again? Merlin, I’m missing something again, aren’t I? Ugh, I’m so—“

Kuroo put a hand on his shoulder before Bokuto spiraled. “Bo, chill. You’re not missing something, but I think that may help. Suguru and I had thought about this plan, but I knew it would never work since the name of the ingredient we needed is too recognizable, but if it looks like something else…”

“You know how to get it?” Bokuto asked.

Sawamura thought that's what it sounded like but looked at Kuroo for conformation.

Kuroo nodded. Sawamura and Bokuto broke out into wide, matching smiles.

“Now we just need to get the ingredients,” Kuroo said. “I think we’ll be able to start brewing by the end of October.”

“Wait,” Sawamura said. “How are you getting into his stash?”

Kuroo looked glum. “We’re going to owe the head boy a big favor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been working on this slowly since the time I finished With Fangs Bared and decided I wanted Kuroo and Sawamura to become animagi like the marauders did for Lupin. (I didn't decided this until after the story had been finished, which is why they're never mentioned to be animagi in that fic.)


	2. Chapter 2

Autumn was Kuroo’s favorite time at Hogwarts—until it was summer and he could swim in the warm lake, or it was winter and the snow layered on the ground, or spring when the trees and flowers bloomed and everything was a vibrant, lively green.

Large pumpkins the size of a carriage had been carved with funny, moving faces that sang and talked to you. The suits of armor began to move around, the more mischievous jumping out and scaring you, always soothing the first years they made cry. And best yet, everything in the Great Hall was pumpkin flavored from the muffins to the juice to the pie.

Usually, Kuroo and Bokuto planned some prank, something harmless, or something a little less harmless if a first year pure-blood said the wrong things to the right people. Sawamura said they were getting too old to prank first years, but Kuroo and Bokuto strongly disagreed.

Yet despite the time honored tradition, the thought of pranking young blood purists did no even cross his mind. He was far too preoccupied with the animagi transformation, Quiddicth practice, prefect duties, and class work.

Kuroo was not happy with their plan, but they didn’t have any other choice. The alternatives were more dangerous. Still, if there was one thing he hated more than blood purists and losing a sock in the wash, it was owing people favors.

He sat in a leather chair next to the lakebed windows in the Slytherin common room. One of the merpeople was swimming outside, attracted to the windows by the light. The merperson used the faint, greenish light coming from the common room to pick up various shells and stones on the lake bottom, occasionally showing one to Kuroo, who nodded like he understood what he was looking at. It was hard to see in the muddy, murky lake. On a good day, though, you could see the giant squid.

He ran his quill against a scrap of parchment, enjoying the quiet sound it made against the paper. He had to write a fake list of ingredients to a fake potion. It wasn’t as easy as it seemed. The head boy Arashi was apparently rather smart, according to Kenma.

It was surprising even though Arashi was a Ravenclaw. His carefree attitude made him seem like a bit of an airhead. Regardless, Professor Nekomata only took on NEWT students that managed to get an O on their OWLs so even an airheaded NEWT student would easily recognize ingredients that were incompatible.

Kuroo heard familiar footsteps before he heard the squeak of leather as someone leaned against the back of the armchair. Two arms draped over the top of the chair, hands falling near Kuroo’s shoulders, and Kuroo’s heart sped up just slightly. He could see Daishou’s reflection the window, his chin pressed to the top of the sofa. The merperson was gone, startled.

“Making a list to trick our precious head boy?” Daishou asked.

Kuroo brought his quill up and tucked it behind his ear, looking over the list. “What do you think?”

Daishou pressed harder against the chair, his hands sliding a bit further down until they were over Kuroo’s chest, just barely touching.

“Let’s see. Ash from some weird Balkan tree, mercury, canis root, boomslang skin …” Daishou frowned. “It looks like all of those things are common ingredients except for the boomslang skin, which you can easily order anonymously for the right price.”

Daishou pulled back his arms and walked around the chair. He snatched the parchment from Kuroo. “Wait. Quatrz crystal? That’s not a potion ingredient that I’ve ever heard of.”

Kuroo took back the parchment, ignoring Daishou’s curious, sly look. Daishou was smart. He would figure it out.

Kuroo wouldn’t—no, _couldn’t_ let that happen. They needed to keep this a secret, even from friends. If something went wrong, they may never get a second chance to try again and Bokuto would have to transform by himself for the rest of his life. Kuroo wasn’t taking that chance.

“It’s alchemy,” Kuroo said. “It’s represents the earth, or something. I read it in a book.”

“Why are you doing alchemy? I thought you called it a potion.”

“Alchemic potion.”

Kuroo met Daishou’s eyes and held his gaze for several moments. Eventually Daishou must have gotten bored because he leaned against the window and crossed his arms, the epitome of relaxed and cool.

“The first Dueling Club meeting of the year is at the end of the week,” Daishou said. “The seventh year in charge wanted us to do a demonstration duel for the newbies. You in?”

Kuroo grinned. “Of course. I can’t pass up a chance to embarrass you.”

Daishou’s grin was far more wicked. Kuroo really didn’t mind.

“You’re the one who’s going to be embarrassed when I wipe the floor with you,” Daishou said.

“Bring it.”

 

* * *

 

Here’s what Kuroo knew about Arashi Kyousuke:

He was a seventh year Ravenclaw and head boy. During Kenma’s first year, Arashi was a fourth year. He had worked with Kenma for months helping him figure how to use his electronics inside the castle. Kenma said he found Arashi bearable because of this.

Arashi had long hair that he kept up in a ponytail most of the time. He gave off the bad boy look and was quick to joke, making him popular with girls and boys. 

The combination of NEWTs he was taking would have been impossible during his OWL years—the class times conflicted on multiple occasions—so he had to have been given a time turner to attend his classes. This meant he was smart and well trusted by the professors. Despite this trust, he sold his old notes to younger students and sold invigoration draughts and speed-reading potions to his fellow Ravenclaws; he turned quite the profit last year.

And most importantly, he stuck his nose into all of the prefects’ business because he was annoying. (And it was his job.)

“Kuroo, this is stupid,” Kenma said. His fingers flew over his video game. “Why do you even need to steal from Nekomata? And why do you need Arashi to help you?”

“I told you, it’s for Bokuto,” Kuroo said. “That’s all I can tell you right now. Now just pretend to be interested in what I’m saying.”

Kenma gave him a blank look. “I’m never interested in what you’re saying.”

Kuroo put a hand over his heart. “Kenma, I’m deeply hurt.” He lowered his hand to his lap where he had the fake list of potion ingredients. “Now, Kenma, like I was saying. These are the ingredients we need for our potion.”

“Uh-huh.”

Kuroo talked non-sense for several more moments, thankful that Kenma was playing along for so long. Kenma was a good friend. Kuroo hadn’t spent much time with him since school started. Kenma had even decided to tryout for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team without telling him right away. Not that Kenma had to tell him everything. He just hoped Kenma had people he could talk to. There was that Gryffindor, Yamamoto, in his year that seemed to hang around Kenma a lot.

Eventually, the seventh years were let out of Transfiguration. They had to cross by the courtyard where Kuroo and Kenma were to get to Charms, which meant Arashi would see them.

And see them he did.

Arashi’s tie was loose around his neck, his shirt white untucked from his pants, the first few buttons near his collar undone. He was a combination of the boy a girl would want to bring home to her parents and the one she wouldn’t.

“Hey, Kozume!” Arashi said, approaching them from behind. Kuroo and Kenma turned their heads. Arashi recognized Kuroo, pointing at him. “Hey, Kuroo. I heard you two were friends, but I’ve never actually seen you together.”

Kuroo frowned. He didn’t like it when people talked about Kenma.

“How’d you know we’re friends?” Kuroo asked.

“Kenma mentioned it a few years ago. He’s quiet and I wanted to make sure he had friends and he said he knew you so I dropped it.”

Arashi grinned and Kenma looked back down at his game, furiously tapping the buttons.

Arashi knelt behind the bench they were sitting at, poked his head between their shoulders, and looked down at the parchment in Kuroo’s lap.

“What’re you guys look at? Potion protocol? Oh, alchemy, huh?”

Kuroo kept his surprise hidden. “You know alchemy?”

That was not part of the plan.

“Never done it,” Arashi said casually. “We learned about it in History of Magic and I got curious. It’s a cool mix of transfiguration and potions.”

“I can’t make it,” Kuroo said, waving the bit of parchment. “I don’t have a lot of the ingredients.”

Arashi plucked the parchment from him, leaning slightly against Kuroo, who figured it was to avoid touching Kenma. That was considerate of him. Kenma had issues with being touched. Arashi probably knew that if they were in the same house.

“What ingredients? I have a few of these. Not the boomslang skin, though, or the quartz. That’s more an alchemy ingredient than a potion ingredient so it’s not in my stocks.

“Exactly,” Kuroo said, glad Arashi was falling for it. “I heard some students ask Nekomata for ingredients, but I don’t how happy he’d be giving me boomslang skin. And I could find quartz in the forest, but I don’t how pure it would be.”

“I have a key to Nekomata’s stash,” Arashi said easily. He handed the paper back to Kuroo, but remained pressed against him. “All seventh year NEWT students do since we need to go in at odd hours and work on our potions.”

Kuroo knew that. Well, Daishou had.

“If I took over some of your rounds, do you think you could get me what’s on the list?” Kuroo asked.

“All of it?”

“Do you mind?”

Arashi shrugged. “Okay. But I won’t make you take rounds from me. I know you’re busy with Quidditch. I’ve actually meaning to talk to you, Sawamura, and Michimiya about this, but if you guys get booked with Quidditch practice, just let me know and I’ll switch around your rounds schedules.”

Kuroo was taken aback. Arashi didn’t seem like the type to give up a chance to get out of doing work.

“Can I keep that?” Arashi pointed to the parchment with the fake potion ingredients. “I need to go check on a potion and can grab the stuff on my way out.”

Kuroo handed over the list. “Where should I meet you?”

Arashi thought for a second. “How about I meet you here around eight? You should be done practice by then, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. See you later, then. Kozume, if you go right down that hall, you find a really cool chest.”

Arashi smiled and stood up, clapping Kuroo on the shoulder and leaving.

 

* * *

 

Kuroo waited in the courtyard with Sawamura and Bokuto. They ate chocolate frogs and revised their Astronomy homework that was due later that night while they waited for Arashi.

Sawamura was still skeptical about the plan, Kuroo could tell. He thought it was too risky, but it’s not like they had a choice. Physically breaking into Nekomata’s office was out of the question. Asking an older student was the best option, even if they were in Arashi’s debt. It was even better that Arashi would think he was stealing a crystal, not a highly nefarious mushroom.

“Wait, Kuroo, why do you have that Mars changes the strength of fire spells when it’s aligned with Jupiter?” Bokuto asked. “Isn’t it Neptune?”

“I thought it was Saturn,” Sawamura said.

“Merlin’s pants,” Boktuo muttered. “Kuroo, you have the best Astronomy mark, right? Are you sure it’s Mars?”

“Pretty sure,” Kuroo replied with a frown.

He did have a good mark in Astronomy—he had a good mark in everything by most people’s standards—but it was far from his best. Defense Against the Dark Arts and Charms were by far his best subjects.

Kuroo began to look for his notes to double-check. He was elbow deep in his bag when Bokuto nudged him with his elbow, saying, “Hey, hey, is that him? He has the head boy badge, yeah?”

Kuroo looked up and saw Arashi walking towards him. He stopped in front of them with a pleasant, friendly, “Hey, Sawamura, Kuroo.” He looked at Bokuto. “I don’t know you yet. I’m Arashi. Nice to meet you.”

“Bokuto.”

“Why does that sound so familiar? Oh, right, right! Hufflepuff’s chaser. Nice job last season. I heard you guys are the favorite to win the Quidditch House Cup this year.”

Bokuto positively beamed.

Arashi pulled his messenger bag in front of him and pulled out a relatively small velvet pouch and tossed it to Kuroo. Kuroo opened it and peered inside, noticing it was charmed to be larger on the inside.

“It’s all in there,” Arashi said, tucking his hands into his back pockets. He looked perfectly casual, like he didn’t just steal from their Potions’ professor.

How did a guy like him get the trust of the professors? How did he get named head boy?

“Thanks,” Kuroo said, putting the pouch of ingredients inside his bag. “I’ll let you know how the potion goes.”

Arashi grinned. “I’m sure you won’t, but that’s okay. I do want to talk about my payment, though.”

Kuroo kept his expression neutral. Sawamura and Bokuto both looked at him, slightly panicked, Sawamura hiding it better than Boktuo, who could never hide his emotions.

“I thought you said you didn’t want me to take your rounds,” Kuroo said cautiously.

“I don’t want you to. Just keep it in mind that you owe me a favor.” He smiled, took a hand out of his pocket to wave, and whistled as he walked away.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Kuroo muttered when Arashi was out of earshot.

 

* * *

 

There were only two things that could redeem the hell caused by Arashi Kyousuke:

One, the fact that they were one step closer to becoming animagi and transforming with Bokuto.

And two, the fact that Kuroo was currently heading to the first Dueling Club meeting of the year with Daishou and Daishou’s roommates: Sakashima, Takachiho, Numai, and Hiroo.

Kuroo felt strong and confident when he walked with Daishou and his gang of friends. He felt like he ruled the world, like nothing could knock him down. They laughed and crowds parted for them, or it felt like they did. No one dared to stand against them. It was a good feeling. It was a dangerous feeling.

Kuroo loved it as much as he hated it.

Daishou’s roommates were friends of Kuroo’s in a sense. They’d split butterbeers and bitter chocolate if they were together in the common room, and they cheered for their Quididtch team before Kuroo joined it himself. They never hung out with Kuroo without Daishou there, except for the occasional meal in the dining hall when Daishou was sick as a dog back in his room or when they needed his help in a particular class.

They were all like Daishou, a bit too ruthless, a bit too ambitious, but never going further than putting a toe over the line. They weren’t in too deep and Kuroo didn’t mind it that way. They didn’t hurt anyone even if they were sly about their ways.

Dueling Club was held in an empty lecture hall. It was a large room with three long platforms in the center for dueling and makeshift stands for people to sit on so everyone could see the action. The club was completely student run except for the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor that watched to keep an eye on everyone.

It felt like home.

It felt even better when everyone turned and looked at them, looked at Kuroo and Daishou. After last year’s seventh years graduated, they were probably the best two duelers in the school despite being fifth years, though their styles were completely different.

The seventh year in charge of the club, a Gryffindor, came up to them and asked, “You two ready to go?”

Kuroo reached into his pocket and took out his wand. “Whenever he is.” He gave Daishou a challenging grin.

Daishou met his eyes and it sent shivers up Kuroo’s spine for more reasons than one.

“I’m always ready,” Daishou replied.

They waited for several more moments until the seventh year determined it was okay to start. Kuroo and Daishou walked towards the platform, stepping up on opposite ends. Everyone began to gather around for the show, watching as the two Slytherins walked towards each other, lifted their wands, and then paced away so they were at equal distances from the center. Kuroo knew the number of steps he needed to take without thinking, like muscle memory.

Kuroo could feel his heart thumping the same way it did when he played a match, his bat in one hand and his broom in the other, a bludger whirling towards him before he sent it hurling towards someone else. The energy was unexplainable. It made him feel like a live wire.

He turned to face his opponent, face _Daishou_ , who was grinning wickedly.

“Bring it,” Daishou mouthed silently.

Kuroo grinned back and raised his wand.

 

* * *

 

Kuroo walked past Kenma on his way to the Great Hall, not even realizing it was him. He wouldn’t have at all if Kenma hadn’t been playing his game and Yamamoto from Gryffindor hadn’t been next to him.

Kuroo did a double take and realized it was his childhood friend sitting there, not some stranger with shoulder-length blond hair.

“You dyed your hair,” Kuroo said, shocked.

“I did it for him last night!” Yamamoto said proudly.

Kenma looked up from his game rather sheepishly. “Tora said it would make me fit in with my team and make me stand out less.”

Kuroo didn’t know how bright blond hair would help, but he didn’t want to say that. Kenma always had social anxiety. If he thought this would help, then maybe it would. Maybe it would cause a placebo effect in Kenma.

“It’s looks good,” Kuroo said, reaching out and ruffling it. “Have any of your teammates seen it yet?”

Kenma smacked his hand away and smoothed down his hair. “Akaashi said it looked nice.”

Akaashi. That was a name Kenma had mentioned before. The two were in the same year and sometimes studied together, but that was all Kuroo knew about him. He didn’t know the boy had joined the Quidditch team along with Kenma.

“What does he play?” Kuroo asked curiously.

“Chaser. He’s good.” Kenma looked back down at his game.

Kuroo reached into his bag. He pulled out a long, thin box that he had wrapped in the _Daily Prophet_ and handed it to Kenma. It was a griffin quill, something practical that Kenma could use even if he didn’t love it. He’d get him a muggle video game once they were out of school; he said so on a note inside the box.

“Happy birthday, Kenma.”

Kenma took the box, didn’t open it, and nodded.

“Well, I’ll see you around, Kenma. And I mean it, your hair looks nice.”

“Thanks,” Kenma muttered, clearly embarrassed.

Kuroo walked away, hands in his pockets, wondering if Kenma had expressed his anxiety to Yamamoto, or if Yamamoto had just noticed it. Either way, Kenma had a good friend in him. It sounded like Akaashi was a good friend too.

Kuroo felt happy, like warmth spreading through him. Kenma was like a brother to him and he was glad that he had the support he needed.

He walked into the Great Hall, spotting Bokuto and Sawamura at the end of the Hufflepuff table. They were hunched together, plotting something probably, and Kuroo wanted in.

He walked over and sat down. Sawamura and Bokuto looked up from the letter they had been reading.

“Sugawara?” Kuroo asked.

It was the only thing he could think of. There’s no one else they would receive a letter from that would be read by both Sawamura and Bokuto.

Sawamura nodded, the air around him oddly heavy, and slid the letter over to Kuroo. Before Kuroo got the chance to read it, Bokuto said, “Some kid in his third year took Sugawara’s spot on the Quidditch team.”

“No way! Sugawara’s good.”

“The kid’s some prodigy,” Sawamura said. “Suga said his name is Kageyama.”

“Like _the_ Kageyama?” Kuroo asked, recognizing the old pure-blood name.

“I dunno, but apparently this Kageyama kid’s really pissing off one of the guys at Sugawara’s school,” Bokuto said. “That guy who was featured in that Top Ten Young Quidditch Players to Watch article in _Quidditch Monthly_ is losing his shit. What’s his name again?”

“Oikawa,” Sawamura said.

Bokuto nodded. “Yeah, that guy.”

“Beauxbatons takes Quidditch a lot more seriously than Hogwarts,” Kuroo pointed out. “They actually play matches against other schools and allow outsiders to come watch. It makes sense a prodigy would want to go there and show off. And third year is the first year they’re allowed to try out for the teams, right?”

“Yeah. Suga’s super bummed,” Sawamura said seriously. “He sent three tins of stress-baked cookies. Some of them are _burnt_.”

Kuroo whistled. That meant this was bad.

“What can we do to help?” Kuroo asked.

“Maybe we can fly down there?” Bokuto suggested.

Sawamura smiled. “I don’t think that’d be possible, but it might cheer him up if you threaten to.”

Bokuto perked up and nodded like it was a very serious task. Kuroo laughed.

 

* * *

 

Kuroo made up his mind that every night, he would spend half an hour revising. Each day would be a different subject and he would take off days as needed for Quidditch. As he headed to the library for his first review session—Defense Against the Dark Arts, one of his better subjects to start off on a good note—he ran into Sawamura and Bokuto.

Bokuto had this wild look in his eyes that always got them into trouble. Sawamura looked like he was just along for the ride, but he seemed less reluctant than usual. That meant whatever Bokuto had planned was crazy, but not _too_ crazy.

“What’re you doing?” Bokuto asked, looking at Kuroo’s book-heavy bag.

“Going to the library to study for OWLs,” Kuroo said.

Bokuto made an ugly face. “No. Don’t even talk about that! We have _months_.”

Shocked, Sawamura looked at Bokuto. “You haven’t started studying?”

“You have?” Bokuto squawked, his owl-ness showing.

“Every Saturday, I put in two hours with Asashi. We do another hour on Wednesdays if we’re up to it and Quidditch practice doesn’t get in the way.”

Bokuto tugged at his hair. “Shit, should I start studying?”

“Get Shirofuku to help,” Sawamura suggested. “She’s got good marks and she’s friends with Shimizu, who has better marks.”

Bokuto began to nod urgently, fingers still tight in his hair. Sawamura put a hand on his back and patted him several times, trying to calm him down.

“Well,” Kuroo said, “I’m going to the library.”

“Want to go into the forest looking for potion ingredients instead?” Bokuto asked. “We were coming to find you. We were going to bribe a first year Slytherin to get you out of the common room if we had to, or see if we could find your demon cat on the steps and tie a note to it.”

Kuroo felt the straps of his bag digging into his shoulder. He should study. He really should. (He should also figure out where his cat Kenma was. He liked to explore and stretch his legs.)

He should _also_ go adventuring. Like Bokuto said, they had months before OWLs.

 

* * *

 

With the chameleon toadstool obtained, they decided they needed to get the second-hardest ingredient before the leaves fell. They needed dew that had not seen human feet, meaning it had not been stepped on, and had not seen the sunlight. Bokuto thought they could get it in the forest where the trees were thicker, or in a cave.

Kuroo put his books back in his room and then headed out into the forest with Sawamura and Bokuto. Bokuto took to the sky as an owl while Kuroo and Sawamura kept their feet on the ground.

Kuroo watched, enraptured, as Bokuto transformed. His clothes morphed into his skin, his arms turning into wings and feet into talons. His eyes grew, losing some of their white sclera, his nose elongating into a shiny black beak.

“Stay out of the forbidden forest, Bokuto!” Sawamura called out before Bokuto flew away. Bokuto hooted and flew off, disappearing ahead. Sawamura sighed and looked at Kuroo. “He said he’d go north and we’d go west, right?”

Kuroo nodded in conformation. He used a compass spell that pointed them in the right direction.

The forest smelled like worms and rotten foliage, strangely sweet like flowers and fresh like non-blooming bushes. The air was heavy with humidity. Wet soil and fallen leaves stuck to the bottoms of their shoes. Soon trees surrounded them, but there was still plenty of light to see.

So they went deeper.

It was easy being with Sawamura. They could be silent and it did not matter. When it was just Kuroo and Bokuto, someone was always talking, always laughing. His friendship with Sawamura was different than his friendship with Bokuto, but that didn’t make either one more important than the other.

Kuroo wouldn’t be risking his body and future to become an animagi if Bokuto wasn’t one of the best friends he ever had. And he wouldn’t be doing it with Sawamura if the same was not true for him.

“There,” Sawamura said suddenly, pointing to a pile of rocks to their right. “Does that look like a cave to you?”

“Let’s go find out,” Kuroo said. He shifted his wand in his hand, stuck his pinkies into his mouth, and whistled loudly.

Bokuto answered with a loud hoot somewhere in the distance.

The pile of rocks was further away than it seemed, which meant it was also much bigger than Kuroo initially thought. It was not a tiny cave for rabbits, but a large structure with mossy rocks that ran deeper than Kuroo could see. He would shine his light, but he did not want to tamper with their potential source of dew. The entrance was ten feet wide and just as tall, but the roof lowered as the cave grew deeper. It seemed to go underground at some point, deep into the earth.

“It shouldn’t get sun, right?” Sawamura asked.

“One way to find out,” Kuroo said as he began to climb to the top of the cave. He nearly slipped on the moss, wet and slimy beneath his hands, but he made it up safely.

Sawamura remained on the ground, arms crossed, with an exasperated expression.

“What are you doing?” Sawamura asked.

“The sun is behind us right now and east is that way, west is there, meaning the arc of the sun will never pass in front of the cave.”

Sawamura nodded slowly then said, “So it shouldn’t see direct sunlight.”

“In theory.”

Bokuto came soaring down from the sky, perching on Kuroo’s head. Kuroo swatted at him. Bokuto nestled down.

“Can you see if there’s anything in this cave, Bo?” Kuroo asked.

Bokuto flapped his wings and flew onto the ground, hoping a few feet into the cave.

Kuroo knelt and hung his upper half over the edge, dangling, and looked into the dark cave. He heard Sawamura’s choked, panicked, “Kuroo!” but ignored it, like always. If he fell, it would surely hurt, but he would not fall so it was fine.

“See any dew, Bo?”

Bokuto flew out and transformed back into a human next to Sawamura. He stood, stretching out his arms, and said, “Can’t really see much… My hearing is better than my night vision.”

Still dangling off the top of the cave, Kuroo playfully asked, “Dew doesn’t make a sound, does it?”

“There’s a creek,” Bokuto said. “So there’s probably some plants with some dew, yeah?”

Sawamura looked at Kuroo, who shrugged.

“Worth a shot,” Kuroo said.

“How can we get in there, though?” Sawamura asked. “The dew can’t see sunlight, so our light spell is out, and our feet can’t touch it.”

Kuroo went quiet, sure that if he thought for a moment, he would think of something, but Bokuto beat him to it.

“Let’s use that spell for those blue flames,” Boktuo said. “That light isn’t sunlight, right?”

Sawamura looked at Bokuto, surprised. “That’s a good idea.”

“Don’t sound so surprised!” Bokuto shouted. “I’m smart too!”

Kuroo got up and climbed back down the edge cave, landing on the solid ground with a thump. “Let’s go explore a cave.”

 

* * *

 

Kuroo wiped the sweat from his brow at the end of practice. The new captain was intense. Kuroo almost thought Suzumeda, the third year seeker that just joined the team, would quit—not just the practice, but the team.

But Suzumeda was stronger than Kuroo’s initial impression and she stuck around, though she did throw up after an entire afternoon of feint practice. Kuroo had rubbed her back sympathetically while another girl held her hair.

She was a damn good seeker. Kuroo was glad she had made the team.

After a quick shower and a change of clothes, Kuroo walked towards the broom shed. Coming down the hill was the Ravenclaw team. He saw Kenma’s bright blond hair and grinned.

He still couldn’t believe Kenma had done that. He couldn’t believe Kenma cared enough about his team to want to fit in. He couldn’t believe Kenma liked Quidditch enough to join a team.

Kuroo lingered, waiting for Kenma, who saw him and walked over. Only he did not come alone. A fair-skinned boy with black hair and an almost unreadable expression trailed alongside him.

“You guys play Hufflepuff in a few weeks, right?” Kuroo asked.

Kenma raised an eyebrow. “You know that. Why are you asking?”

“To make conversation,” Kuroo said. He looked at the black-haired boy. “Akaashi?” he guessed.

“Yes. You must be Kuroo,” Akaashi said, holding out his hand. “Kozume has mentioned you.”

Kuroo shook it, surprised by how strong his grip was. He grinned. He wondered what Akaashi was like on the Pitch. Kenma said he was a chaser. That meant Kuroo would be hurdling bludgers at his pretty face soon enough.

Kuroo smiled and tossed an arm around Kenma’s shoulder. “So Kenma talks about me, huh?”

“Only bad things,” Kenma mutters.

Kuroo ruffled his hair. Kenma groaned and ducked away, pushing at Kuroo’s chest. Kuroo grinned.

“We should get to practice,” Akaashi said, looking at Kenma.

Kenma nodded. As they walked away, Kenma waved awkwardly at Kuroo, who waved back.

 

* * *

 

For rounds, Kuroo was usually paired with the female fifth year prefect from his house, a girl named Aihara, but that wasn’t always the case. Tonight, he was paired with Mika from Ravenclaw.

Mika was in his year and they took the core classes together, but she took different electives; she took Muggle Studies and Divination while Kuroo took Aritchmancy and Ancient Runes.

Most of what Kuroo knew about Mika he knew from Daishou talking about her. Daishou had been infatuated with her since first year. She found out Kuroo’s roommates called Daishou a mud-blood and said she was a muggle-born too and that if he ever needed to talk to anyone, she was there.

The two had stayed friends since then. Last year, Daishou asked her out four different times and she turned him down. The last time had been particularly harsh and Daishou backed off completely. Kuroo didn’t think they had spoken since then.

So Kuroo was quite surprised when Mika tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and asked, “You’re friends with Suguru, right?”

Kuroo glanced her, concealing his surprise well. “Yeah.”

She fiddled with her hands. “He hasn’t talked to me much this year and I was wondering if he was mad at me.”

Kuroo didn’t want to call her stupid because she wasn’t. But she was stupid. She had made it very clear how she felt last year.

“You _did_ tell him to leave you alone,” he said cautiously.

He didn’t look at her, but he could still see her blush furiously out of the corner of his eye. “I—that was just when he was asking me out. I didn’t think about him that way then. We were just friends, you know? But he didn’t write this summer or anything, and he hasn’t said anything since we got back to school, and I…”

Kuroo let her talk, stepping to the side briefly to check a nook behind a heavy tapestry. People liked to snog there, according to Arashi, so it was worth checking. No one was there.

“I miss him,” Mika said finally, quiet. “My friends keep telling me he’s this slimeball, but he’s not like that. Well, not all the time. You’re his friend; I’m sure you know how he can be when it’s just the two of you.”

When it was just the two of them?

Kuroo knew that Daishou would lie in his bed, their sides pressed together as they shared bitter liquorice wands and class notes.

He knew how Daishou laughed when they were drunk off fire whiskey in the empty common room at two in the morning.

He knew how fierce Daishou’s eyes looked staring at him from the other side of the dueling platform.

He knew how Daishou looked when he fell asleep in the library when they studied for too long during exam weeks, how his hair felt when Kuroo dared to touch it without Daishou ever knowing.

Kuroo made a vague sound of agreement, not sure what he was supposed to say. Definitely not any of _that_.

Still, he acknowledged her real point.

Daishou and Kuroo’s personalities and view of the world were different. Daishou was determined, especially about dueling, and would do everything in his power to win. Kuroo didn’t see why that was a bad thing, even if he hated some of the things Daishou’s said.

But when it was just the two of them, Daishou’s visciousness seemed less intense. He didn’t say the things that made Kuroo’s stomach churn or make him question why he was friends with him in the first place.

When it was just the two of them, it was easier to pick and choose the qualities he liked about Daishou and to ignore the ones he hated.

Mika was quiet for long stretch of time. They cleared the Transfiguration Corridor and began to descend down to the next level. Kuroo wondered if she was going to say anything else.

“So do you like him now?” Kuroo asked eventually, tired of the silence, of not knowing where she wanted this conversation to go. “Or do you just miss him?”

“I miss him, but... I wouldn’t mind if he asked me out now.”

He could lie and say Daishou was over her. That was the scumbag thing to do, wasn’t it? If word of that got back to Daishou, their friendship was over.

“You should ask him to Hogsmeade,” Kuroo said, chest tight. “The next trip is on Halloween. I’m sure he’ll say yes.”

Mika nodded. “Thanks, Kuroo. You’re a good guy, despite what people say about you.”

Kuroo grinned bitterly and tilted his head down.

There were the rumors about him and girls. How he treated them. What he had done with them. They all had no basis. Not only because he had never so much as kissed a girl, but because he would never kiss a girl in the future.

His housemates called him a blood-traitor. His pure-blood father, the only male of his generation, married a muggle. His wicked grandparents cared about nothing besides passing on the family name so they tolerated Kuroo’s father and Kuroo. Too bad Kuroo wasn’t passing on the family name and bloodline for the same reason he was never going to kiss a girl.

Worse, every few months, the _story_ began to spread again amongst the first years, who heard it from older students. They never told the whole story, never bothered to say it was because his roommate called Daishou, his _friend,_ a mud-blood. People only knew that Kuroo was the type of person to hex his roommate’s tongue out.

Kuroo knew _exactly_ people said about him.

 

* * *

 

Hogsmeade spared no expense for its Halloween celebration. The cobblestone streets were caked in orange and red leaves that had fallen from the trees and were lined with large jack-o-lanterns, some of which told scary stories. Animated skeletons danced in store front windows and large cauldrons of candy sat outside of Honeydukes. When the sun began to set, candles would rise and light up the streets, like the candles in the Great Hall.

Kuroo walked down the street with Sawamura and Bokuto. As per Hogsmeade trip tradition, Kuroo and Bokuto were arguing about where to stop first and Sawamura mediated.

They stopped by Honeydukes so Bokuto could get candy (Kuroo and Sawamura stocked up, too) and then stopped by the Herbology shop so Sawamura could look at gloves since his were eaten away by Pluto bird traps two weeks ago. Kuroo convinced them to go to the bookstore with him so he could look at Ancient Runes books to supplement his studies; Bokuto went to the Quidditch section while Sawamura lingered and talked to Azumane outside.

After they were all satisfied, they made their way to the Three Broomsticks. The pub was fill with students as well as a few older locals that were off of work.

At one of the tables, right there in the open where anyone could see, were Daishou and Mika. The Ravenclaw was dolled up in some cute outfit that obviously wasn’t very warm because she was wearing Daishou’s outermost robe. Kuroo felt something sharp in his chest, something painful.

“Is that Daishou with Mika?” Bokuto asked, whispering loudly in that way he did that completely defeated the purpose of whispering. “How did that happen? She’s _way_ out of his league.”

“Jealous?” Kuroo asked with a smirk.

“Yes!”

Kuroo smiled, feeling bitter, and Sawamura laughed.

“I’ll get drinks,” Sawamura said.

“Oh, and some of those cheesy potato things,” Bokuto said.

“Cheesy potato things,” Sawamura said slowly. He smiled and nodded. “Got it.”

Kuroo and Bokuto found a booth in the corner that hadn’t been taken and settled down. Bokuto immediately began to play with the salt shaker while Kuroo tapped his foot restlessly and looked around, ignoring Daishou and Mika. He was sure he would hear all about their date tonight in the common room from Daishou himself. No use speculating on how it was going.

What the hell was he thinking, telling Mika to ask Daishou out? He just knew that if Daishou found out Kuroo had passed up the opportunity, Daishou would never forgive him. He had stopped talking about Mika since that time in fourth year, but he still so obviously liked her.

After a few minutes—Bokuto had managed to spill the entirety of the salt shaker and was attempting to brush it back in while Kuroo watched—Sawamura returned with three pints of butterbeer and a basket of cheesy potato bits.

Kuroo reached into his robes for his pouch of coins to pay his share, but Sawamura shook his head.

“They’re on the house,” Sawamura said. “Apparently the bartender is one of my teammate’s older sister.”

There was a busty blond woman with short hair behind the bar laughing loudly. There were two boys in front of her. That damn Gryffindor keeper from last year, Nishinoya, and a newer face, a kid with a buzzcut. Kuroo had watched the Gryffindor tryouts and remembered him trying out for beater.

The bartender smiled and gave them a thumbs up. Sawamura waved in thanks.

“Sweet!” Bokuto said.

Bokuto downed half of his butterbeer so quickly it was impressive. It left behind a faint line of fizz about his lip that he didn’t wipe away until Sawamura pointed it out. Kuroo laughed at Bokuto’s shocked expression, as if this didn’t happen every time he drank butterbeer.

It was easy to forget the sour, knotted feeling in his stomach when Bokuto and Sawamura were laughing right there next to him.

“Ah!” Bokuto shouted suddenly. “Kuroo, we didn’t do anything for Halloween.”

Every year, Bokuto and him did something outrageous and stupid (and got away with it, thank you very much). Last year, they had made the pumpkins vomit their seeds during the feast. The year before, they made the skeletons dance and stuck dungbombs in that blood purist’s bag.

He had completely forgotten.

“We didn’t go after first years either,” Kuroo said.

“You’re still doing that?” Sawamura asked. “I know you only go after blood purists, but you’re both too old to attack _first years_.”

“We’ll make up for it,” Kuroo said, ignoring Sawamura. Blood purists were never too young to be taught a painless lesson with dungbombs. “We’ll plan something awesome before the end of the year.”

Bokuto nodded and lifted his glass. “A toast.”

“To what? Getting detention?” Sawamura asked.

“To having fun!” Bokuto said, looking at Sawamura like he was crazy.

Bokuto reached over and curled Sawamura’s fingers around the handle of his pint glass and urged his hand into the air. Sawamura smiled, shook his head, and held his arm up.

Kuroo lifted his glass. “To mischief.”

“To definitely _not_ getting detention,” Bokuto followed.

Kuroo and Bokuto looked at Sawamura, who caved after several seconds and reluctantly said, “To friends.”

They clinked their glasses and tipped them back. Butterbeer never tasted so good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know how Kenma dyed his hair in this fic isn't exactly how it happened in canon, but I love his and Yamamoto's subtle friendship too much to resist! 
> 
> There aren't that many canon characters that are two years older than the third years (I think there's Karasuno's old captain and maybe one more?) and none of them had the personality I wanted for Arashi's role in this fic so I went ahead and made a very small OC.


	3. Chapter 3

Bokuto only remembered meeting his mother once. Apparently she had lived with his father for a few months after he was born, but she left soon after his first birthday. There were only a handful of pictures of her and him. There was one photograph he kept in the box under his bed that he liked more than the rest.

The box had all of the pretty stones he found in the forest and the bones of his favorite hunts; his favorite skull was named Felicia, a rabbit he had caught in third year.

He liked his skulls, bones, and stones, his little trophies. He picked the bones clean with his beak then washed them white with his human hands. On rare days, he needed to feel connected to his other half, the half of him that was not human. Most days, he pretended it did not exist. But he kept the box anyways.

In the picture he kept in the box, his mother was human, or at least looked like one. She could change shape. Her kind adapted the skill when they began to be hunted. They needed to blend in, to hide.

She looked beautiful as a human, though a bit odd, not _quite_ human enough. Her nose was hooked, beak-like. Her hair was long and straight, black as night, and nearly came down to her waist. In the picture, it was braided with flowers and pieces of foliage were intertwined. Bokuto was only a few months old in the picture and he grasped at her hair and she smiled at him, her lips pale and thin, eyes yellow just like his.

The next time Bokuto saw her was on the eve of his seventh birthday. He had just begun to transform. He would wake up and see his room from a new, lower perspective, his height drastically shorter in his owl form. He would change at night without meaning to. Sometimes he felt sick if it didn’t come and take him over, like he was being caged, like he couldn’t breathe, like he didn’t fit inside his skin and bones.

She taught him to control his abilities, how to hide it, how to be human. She taught him a spell that allowed his clothes to transform with him so he was not naked when reverted from owl to human.

But he was growing so fast these last few years that he went through new robes every few months and he sometimes forgot. On multiple occasions, he had hidden behind a bush to dress while Kuroo and Sawamura watched guard.

Merlin, those moments would have been mortifying if it wasn’t Kuroo and Sawamura. With them, they were able to laugh about it.

Bokuto didn’t really miss his mom. He wondered about her sometimes, how she was, if she was still alive, roaming the forests and skies. He wondered what she looked like as an owl. Her nature form had to be far more impressive than her human form. She was not cut in half like Bokuto; she was pure magic. He wanted to see her fly just once, maybe even fly with her and go hunting.

Owls were solitary creatures, but Bokuto never felt comfortable alone as an owl. Animals knew he was not like them and feared him, even ones he didn’t hunt. Humans would surely run too if they knew what he was. He was a freak, a monster.

The idea of having animals next to him, of having Kuroo and Sawamura next to him, made him feel better. He loved the idea, though he wasn’t quite sure why, no matter how much time he thought about it. He supposed that’s what friendship was like sometimes, not knowing why, just accepting the way it made you feel.

Right now, he felt like he was on top of the world.

In his owl form, Bokuto sat on Kuroo’s shoulder as Kuroo and Sawamura made their way through the halls to the first floor girls’ bathroom. It was after hours, which meant Sawamura and Kuroo could be out of bed under the façade of doing rounds, but Bokuto couldn’t.

Bokuto wished he were a prefect just so he could sneak around at night without having to be a damn bird. Being an owl and not being able to fly was like putting alcohol in front of a seventh year about to take their NEWTs. He wanted to stretch his wings, to fly, to hunt.

The first floor girls’ bathroom was run down and empty. The stalls were open but the doors creaked from some unknown breeze, and the sinks were covered in grim and build up.

No one went there because of the ghost so the dust and cobwebs accumulated. Even the house elves had given up on keeping it clean. Still, despite its abandoned state, it smelled better than most boys’ bathrooms.

When the door to the bathroom was closed behind them and Sawamura had cast a locking charm to be safe, Bokuto swooped off of Kuroo’s shoulder and transformed back into a human. He rolled his shoulders, his neck cracking, and let out a relieved sigh when he saw he was wearing his clothes. It was always so embarrassing to be stark naked and not realize it.

He heard clapping and looked around, spotting a young ghost floating in the corner. She had round glasses and pigtails. The house crest on her breast was smudged and worn.

“That was _very_ impressive,” Moaning Mrytle said.

Bokuto beamed, feeling elated at the praise. “I know, right?”

She wasn’t as bad as Bokuto had feared.

Kuroo and Sawamura settled on the floor near the cauldron, which was larger than the standard size they used in class. Kuroo was brewing a double batch in one cauldron. Kuroo and Sawamura would split the potion once they needed to add the final ingredients. Kuroo said there was less room for error that way, if it was only one cauldron instead of two.

“If we’re going to be disfigured for life, we may as well do it together,” Kuroo said casually. “Right, Sawamura?”

Sawamura didn’t say anything, looking a little sick, but not like he wanted to back out. Bokuto laughed nervously.

Kuroo said it would take two months to brew the potion. Halfway through the process, the two needed to keep mandrake leaves in their mouths for a month and then add them as the final ingredient. Bokuto did not envy them.

They had started brewing the potion three days ago, right after Halloween. It smelled of something awful. It was a thick mush of green leaves and brown roots that looked more like a paste than a potion, but Bokuto trusted that Kuroo and Sawamura knew what they were doing.

“You really don’t have to come when it’s late at night,” Sawamura said to Bokuto, not meaning it in a bad way. Sawamura never meant anything in a bad way. Sometimes it easy for Bokuto to understand that, other times it was harder.

Today it was easy.

“I know,” Bokuto said, sitting down and crossing his legs. “But if you guys are risking your body for me, the least I can do is get detention with you.”

“You wouldn’t get detention if you’re an owl.”

Bokuto grinned and tapped the side of his head. “I’m clever, right?”

Kuroo snorted.

Bokuto whipped his head and looked at him. “Hey, I heard that!”

“Are you ready for your match against Ravenclaw?” Sawamura asked, changing the subject.

Bokuto smiled broadly. “We’re going to win so place all your galleons on Hufflepuff.”

“You've never played against Kenma before,” Kuroo said conversely. 

“Is Kozume any good?” Bokuto asked. “He’s playing seeker, right?”

Kuroo smiled like a proud parent. “He’s brilliant.”

 

* * *

 

Bokuto loved the way his canary yellow robes made him feel. He loved the power behind the color, the intensity and energy. The occasional black lines on his uniform were thick and bold, and seeing his name proudly stamped on the back always gave him the best feeling.

He walked confidently onto the Pitch, flanked by the team’s beaters, Azumane and Aone.

The air was crisp and cool, heavy with the scent of the last leaves that had yet to fall. There was a nice breeze, one that wasn’t strong enough to push the quaffle off course, but still strong enough to make him feel like he was going faster when it pushed against his back.

When he reached the middle of the Pitch, he lifted his arms into the air and shouted. Azumane startled while Aone only looked mildly confused. The students in the Hufflepuff section cheered at Bokuto’s shout.

In that moment, he was definitely in an up mode.

“You look fired up,” Azumane said.

Bokuto lowered his arms and looked at him. He tilted his head and asked, “Aren’t you?”

A fire sparked to life behind Azumane’s eyes and Bokuto grinned.

Bokuto mounted his broom and took the sky.

Bokuto was chosen to catch the opening toss of the quaffle. He hovered in the middle of the Pitch, staring at the Ravenclaw he would be duking it out with.

It was a new player that wasn’t on the team last year. The boy had black hair that flipped up at the tips and a thin face. Their dark eyes were focused, a look Bokuto liked on his opponents.

He hoped they were good.

“And Bokuto steals the opening toss for Hufflepuff!” the announcer shouted. “He’s flying down the Pitch, weaving in and out—“

He scored before the keeper could even react.

“And he scores!”

When the crowds cheered, Bokuto felt his chest expanding happily.

“Akaashi catches the toss back for Ravenclaw! Fourth year Akaashi is a new player this year, let’s see what he can—dodges a bludger from Hufflepuff’s Aone—tosses over to—“

Damn it, that black-haired kid was good.

Bokuto sped across the pitch, watching where his captain pointed to know who to mark: the black-haired kid. He hung close, bumping against him, not hard, just firm enough to test the waters. The kid was skinny and easy to knock aside, which meant Bokuto could keep him from catching as long as he stuck close enough—

The guy tipped his broom and dove. 

"Shit!" Bokuto cursed, following him don in a sharp dive of his own. 

The Ravenclaw looked back over his shoulder at Bokuto, then looked back at the ground. Was he trying to break away from Bokuto? Was he challenging Bokuto to a game of chicken? Were they going to nose-dive to the ground and see who came up first? 

Bokuto was  _so_  going to win.

The ground was closer. Bokuto and the Ravenclaw were neck and neck, neither pulling away, neither backing down. The air stung Bokuto's face. His broom was practically perpendicular to the ground. They needed to come up soon or they were both going to eat it. 

Bokuto smiled broadly. He loved Quidditch.

"And Ravenclaw scores!"

The kid pulled up. There were three chasers per a team, three people for the keeper to toss the quaffle back out to. Now, with Bokuto mere feet from the ground, there were only two. He had been played.

"Daaaamn it!" he shouted loudly as he hurried up, gaining altitude. 

He was going to score more than that kid and show him who was the better player.

 

* * *

 

Hufflepuff won in the end, thanks to Bokuto's four consecutive goals and ultimately their seeker, though Kozume certainly put up a good fight. Kozume was as good as Kuroo said—fast, quick minded, and calculating like that kid that tricked Bokuto (it happened two more times before the match was done, though with different tactics, but Bokuto still scored more times than him). 

When the match was over and Hufflepuffs were flooding the field, Bokuto walked away from his team and looked around. He spotted the Ravenclaw team leaving the Pitch with hung heads. Kozume didn't seem particularly bothered.

Bokuto rarely talked to Kozume—he usually ran away when Bokuto tried to talk to him (apparently Bokuto made him anxious)—but it seemed like it would take a lot to upset the guy.

Bokuto ran over to the retreating Ravenclaw team, grabbed that chaser by the shoulder, and smiled broadly. 

“You were really good!” Bokuto said earnestly.

The boy raised an eyebrow. “Obviously not good enough to beat you.”

Oh, Bokuto realized, he was being rude.

“No, no, no!” Bokuto said quickly. “I didn’t meant it like that. I’m not trying to be a dick. I meant it in a good way. You were really good out there, um—what’s your name again?”

“Akaashi.”

“I’m Bokuto.”

“I know.”

“So I was wondering if you’d like to practice sometime?” Bokuto asked. “I used to fly with Kuroo all of the time, but he’s really busy with prefect stuff and studying and Dueling Club.”

Akaashi tilted his head slightly. “You’re asking me to practice with you? Don’t you practice with your team?”

“I do, but it’s good to practice more, don’t you think?”

“I suppose." Akaashi considered it for a brief moment. "We can practice together.”

Bokuto jumped, excited. “Awesome!”

 

* * *

 

Bokuto didn’t know where he was. The walls, the floors—none of it mattered. Wherever he was had a sharp, sour scent, the same as the potion brewing in the first floor girls’ bathroom. There was something deeper in the air, something heavy and fowl.

He looked around and saw Kuroo and Sawamura. Kuroo’s body lied on the ground, twisted in unnatural ways, like a badly broken ankle, only it was every bone in his body. Sawamura tore at his shirt, riding himself of the fabric to claw at the skin underneath.

“Bo,” Kuroo gasped, voice tight, “why did you let us do this?”

Kuroo looked up at him, scales growing on his face, eyes yellow like his own with slits like a snake’s. Fangs pierced through his bottom lip, blood running red down his chin, dripping onto his robes.

“This wasn’t worth it,” Kuroo said, tilting his head down and closing his eyes as he curled forward in pain. He moaned, but the sound did not last. It did not last, not because Kuroo had gone silent, but because it was replaced with a snake’s hiss.

“We shouldn’t have done this for _you_ ,” Sawamura said as the skin on his sides began to bubble and rise, growing, expanding out.

There was a horrible crack of bones. Sawamura screamed. There were arms growing beneath his ribs where there should not be arms.

Sawamura’s four arms reached out and grasped him, shook him, as Sawamura shouted his throat raw in a primal scream, his face twisted up in agony.

Bokuto woke with a start.

His skin was cold and sweaty, his heart racing. He reached up and felt feathers where he should have felt eyebrows. He partially transformed when he was panicked or truly afraid.

He curled forward, tugging his knees into his chest, as he willed himself to breathe and calm down.

Just a dream, he told himself. It was just a dream.

Why did this dream have to feel so real?

When his heart did not slow, he stood up and left his room. He couldn’t stand being stuck in his bed where he had those horrible thoughts. He didn’t want to listen to his roommates’ quiet breathing as they slept soundly. He didn’t want to be alone.

He crossed into the common room and down to the girls’ hall, knowing which door he wanted without thinking. His feet remembered the way and his hand knew when to rise and knock, quietly, politely, because it was not the first time he had gone to Shirofuku’s room in the middle of the night and he knew Shirofuku had a roommate that was a light sleeper.

He wondered if Shirofuku would be awake. He wondered what time it was. He felt sick. He felt like his skin was crawling and his heart was going to jump out of his throat. He felt like suffocating when he was surrounded by air that he just couldn’t seem to breathe.

Was this a panic attack? Shit. He didn’t want to be having a panic attack.

There was a shuffle behind the door then a soft click as it opened. Shirofuku was standing there, rubbing her eyes, looking very sleepy but not annoyed.

“Kou? It’s late.”

“Can I sleep with you?” Bokuto asked, feeling very small like a child. “Unless Shimizu isn’t okay with that…”

He rubbed up and down his arms and stared hard at the floor, trying to replace the images of Sawamura and Kuroo with the scratched hardwood beneath his bare feet. Scales and extra arms flashed in his mind and he whimpered pathetically.

“She’s on rounds. She won’t mind if you’re here when she gets back.”

“Really? Because I don’t want to bother her. Or you.”

She put a hand on his shoulder and gently tugged. “Come on in.”

She closed the door behind them, leaving them in the dark, but she kept a hand on him and slowly walked them towards her bed. She lied down, tugging on his arm. He tapped the edge of the bed with his knees, reached out into the dark to put his hands on the bed, accidentally brushed her stomach, and then crawled onto the bed after her.

She had her back to the wall and her chest to him. He pressed close to her without thinking, breathing in her honey lemon shampoo that covered her and her sheets. He felt warm and safe even before she tossed a blanket over them and brought a hand up to his shoulder, rubbing back and forth.

“I’m listening,” she said, soft. “I may fall asleep, but I’m here, okay? Just wake me up.”

Bokuto licked his lips and closed his eyes, then opened them, not liking the image that came to mind. He couldn’t see in the dark, not really, but it felt better than having his eyes closed. At least he could imagine Shirofuku’s gentle, sleepy face.

“So Kuroo and Sawamura are doing this thing,” Bokuto whispered. “To help me when I’m an owl.”

“Mm-hm,” Shirofuku hummed, sweeping her hand from his shoulder down to his elbow then back up again.

“And it’s dangerous,” Bokuto went on, voice tight. “And I didn’t ask them to. I want them to, but I would never ask for them to do something like this. I don’t want to say no, to tell them to stop, because I want it.”

Shirofuku breathed in deeply and Bokuto found himself mimicking her.

“Does that make me a bad person?”

“No,” Shirofuku said, squeezing his arm before she resumed rubbing. “ _No_ , Kou, you’re not a bad person.”

“But I’m letting my friends do something that could ruin their lives! A good friend wouldn’t—I shouldn’t let them do it. I should stop them. But I’m fucking selfish and I don’t want them to stop.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but Kuroo and Sawamura are smart, yeah? Whatever they’re doing, I’m sure they’ll be okay.”

“This is different. This is dangerous. I tell myself it’ll be fine—Kuroo is good at Potions and Sawamura is great at Transfiguration—but it’s not—it could still go wrong and it’ll be my fault. They’re only doing it because of me.”

“It’s not your fault. Nothing will go wrong. Even if it does, they made the choice because they’re your friends. They wanted to. You’re not making them do anything.”

She ran her hand up past his shoulder up to his neck and into his hair. Her fingers moved idly through his hair, rubbing his scalp. He leaned closer to her and, after a moment of hesitation, tossed an arm around her waist to keep her close. He waited a beat before tugging her up against him, waited to see if she told him to stop, but she didn’t.

He felt better with his hand fisted in the back of her shirt. He felt safer smelling her shampoo. He felt grounded with her head tucked beneath his chin and her breath tickling his neck.

“Kou, it’s really hot and the carbon dioxide is getting to me. Plus my face is all sweaty. Lemme move a bit.”

“Sorry.”

She wiggled up the bed so they were face to face and let out a heavy breath. She twirled his hair. It felt nice.

“Why don’t you try to sleep?” she suggested. “You’ll feel better in the morning. You always do.”

Bokuto nodded, his throat tight, and closed his eyes. He focused on her fingers in her hair instead of Sawamura’s four arms on him. He focused on the scent of her shampoo instead of the sour rank of the potion.

He tried not to think about how this was all because he was a monster, not quite human.

 

* * *

 

Bokuto met Shirofuku his first night at Hogwarts. They sat next to each other at the welcoming feast and managed to eat three plates each and then another two during dessert.

He wasn’t friends with her like he was with Kuroo and Sawamura. With Kuroo and Sawamura, it was loud laughter, last minute mischief, and comradery that made Bokuto feel young and alive.

With Shirofuku, it was gentle heads on shoulders, trading snacks late at night, and quiet nights in front of the common room fire while they shared a blanket. Touching her in the most innocent of ways felt like touching himself, like she was an extension of him.

Kuroo and Sawamura were surely his best friends, but Shirofuku was more like a sister, like the second half of his humanity that he was never given a chance to have.

She handled his ups and downs as well as Kuroo and Sawamura, sometimes better. Bokuto was a boy and knew boys could be crap with feelings, but Shirofuku was a girl and she could sometimes sense his moods before he could. Kuroo and Sawamura sometimes got frustrated with him—Bokuto couldn’t blame them—but Shirofuku never did.

Bokuto knew his ups and downs were hard for other people, but they were harder for him. He crashed often and he crashed hard.

When he woke up in Shirofuku’s room, he was exhausted despite sleeping soundly for a few hours. He felt like a puppet with the strings cut, limp and motionless. By the time Shirofuku prodded Bokuto to wake up, Shimizu was already awake and out of the room.

“Food,” Shirofuku said. “You’re coming with.”

He sat next to her in the Great Hall, his head on her shoulder, poking at his food but not eating it. Shirofuku’s friends didn’t seem to mind him, not really, not in a way that Bokuto could tell, so he sat there and listened to them talk.

“I still can’t believe Mika is dating Daishou,” one of Shirofuku’s friends said. “She called him her _boyfriend_ last night. It’s totally official now.”

“She said he’s a good kisser,” another girl snickered.

“She said she was his first kiss, which is kind of sweet.”

“I’m glad she’s happy,” Shirofuku said. “And she deserves someone who can kiss well.”

They laughed.

Bokuto would usually perk up and say that he could kiss well (he had no idea if he could; he had never been kissed), but he didn’t have the energy. He didn’t want to think about how pretty Shirofuku’s friends were, how nice they smelled. He just wanted to close his eyes and go back to sleep.

Shirofuku reached up and scratched Bokuto’s scalp.

As people began to clear out for class, Shirofuku nudged Bokuto.

“Kou, we have class. History of Magic. Maybe there’ll be a slide show today?” Bokuto did not move from her shoulder. Shirofuku sighed. “It’s really bad this time, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said, voice cracking.

“I think you should talk to them about this.”

Bokuto didn’t want to talk to Kuroo and Sawammura about this.

He didn’t want to admit that he was being selfish and letting them turn themselves into monsters so he was not alone.

He didn’t want to make them realize that they were making a mistake.

“I don’t want to talk to them.”

“You need to talk to _someone,_ Kou. C’mon,” Shirofuku said, standing up. “Think about what I said, okay? I really think it will help.”

He nodded and followed her.

 

* * *

 

Bokuto was down the entire day. But that turned around when Akaashi approached him at dinner and asked, “Did you still want to practice?”

Bokuto perked up, shoulders straightening and head tilted back to look at the Ravenclaw. He knew that he was serious about practicing with Akaashi, but part of him thought that maybe Akaashi had agreed to make him go away. People did that sometimes when he got excited. (Bokuto was going to bug him about practicing even if he hadn’t been serious but Akaashi was _good_ and Bokuto liked flying with good people.)

Bokuto nodded eagerly, standing up so suddenly his thighs slammed into the table. Akaashi smiled softly in amusement.

With every step to the Pitch, Bokuto felt better. When he grabbed the handle of his broom, he could hardly remember his bad mood. When he was in the sky, the cool autumn air against his face, a worn out quaffle tucked under his arm?

He felt like nothing could knock him down.

Usually, it took Boktuo awhile to adjust to playing with new people. He had a very particular, aggressive way of playing and not a lot of people could accommodate that. But Akaashi just went with it, adapting like it was second nature, playing with Bokuto like they had been teammates for years.

The precision of Akaashi’s tosses was amazing. It felt like Bokuto could be anywhere and Akaashi would give him the toss to allow him to rush past his opponents and score.

It was hard to see now, when it was just the two of them running the quaffle down the pitch, but during the match, Bokuto had noticed that Akaashi didn’t score much. He set things up and allowed the other chasers to score.

It was far more tactful play style than Bokuto’s. Bokuto liked to blast past his opponents and to score in flashy ways, liked to hear the crowd chanting his name, liked to hear the announcer in awe of his goals.

As he caught Akaashi’s pass and headed down the Pitch, he felt it again. That strange feeling he had felt during the match against Ravenclaw.

He loved Quidditch.

An hour later—had it been more? Bokuto could not tell—their feet touched the ground and they began to make their way to the broomshed. Bokuto was sweaty despite the cool weather and his hands smelled like leather from the quaffle.

“We need more people,” Bokuto said, wiping his face with his robes. “I’ll try and bug Kuroo. Maybe he can bring Kozume. I didn’t even know Kozume played Quidditch until this year.”

“Neither did I,” Akaashi said. “He didn’t play in the Midnight Cup either.”

Bokuto dropped his robes, tilted his head, and pressed his eyebrows together. “The what?”

Akaashi paused, hesitant. “Shirofuku never told you?”

“Told me about what?” Bokuto asked excitedly.

Akaashi shook his head in dismissal. “Forget I said anything.”

Bokuto bounded towards him. “No way. Akaashi, you can’t just mention some secret and not tell me about it! What am I missing?”

“It wouldn’t be a secret if we went around telling everyone,” Akaashi said. “Maybe I’ll tell you someday.”

Bokuto felt his shoulders drop in disappointment.

“I would like to practice with you again,” Akaashi said earnestly as he unlocked the broom shed. “If that’s alright with you.”

Bokuto tossed an arm around Akaashi’s shoulders. “Did you see how well I was flying tonight? Of course we’re practicing together!”

 

* * *

 

_Sugawara,_

_It’s Bokuto. I know we’ve only met a few times and I’ve never written, but something’s on my mind and I don’t think Sawamura or Kuroo would understand like you would._

_I don’t know if Sawamura ever told you, but I’m a half-breed. My mom was a nature spirit. I can change into an owl._

_When we met last summer at Kuroo’s house, you mentioned that your grandmother was a veela. I was just wondering how you dealt with it?_

_-Bokuto_

_PS: Thanks for all the sweets you keep sending!_

 

* * *

 

Luckily, Kuroo’s birthday fell on a Hogsmeade trip so Bokuto and Sawamura did not have to sneak into the kitchens to steal food and drinks to celebrate, though Bokuto would have liked to have done that.

Whenever Sawamura and Bokuto snuck around together, getting up to no good, something always went hilariously wrong. Sawamura himself was more of a stickler for rules, preferring to bend rather than break, whereas Bokuto was a griffin in a vial shop (and he was quite proud of that).

It often ended in detention, or running from Peeves, or both.

The three sat in the corner at the Three Broomsticks and got two rounds of free drinks _and_ free appetizers from the busty blonde bartender. She slapped Kuroo on the back, said he wasn’t so bad for a Slytherin, and said Gryffindor would kick his ass in the next match so enjoy the good times while he could.

She was quite the lady. Bokuto was completely enraptured.

“Thanks, guys,” Kuroo said as he leaned back against the booth. “I needed this. I’ve been seriously worked up over, well, everything. Mostly OWLs.”

“Let’s talk about something less horrifying, like presents!” Bokuto said.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his gift. It was wrapped in one of his assignments (he didn’t do so well on it) and was oddly shaped.

Kuroo took the small, strangely shaped gift and unwrapped it. Bokuto watched Kuroo’s face go from grossed out, to shocked, to amazed. Sawamura’s remained grossed out.

“Is this a snake skull?” Kuroo asked as he gently touched the fangs. “Bo, that’s wicked cool. Did you fight a bloody snake for me?”

“I just found it in the forest,” Bokuto said, laughing. He should have lied and told Kuroo he took down a mammoth snake just for him. “Beat that, Sawamura.”

Sawamura rolled his eyes and took out two boxes from his bag. One was wrapped in pastel wrapping paper with curly ribbons and the other was wrapped in the _Daily Prophet_.

“No fair!” Bokuto said. “Two gifts is cheating.”

“Like he said,” Kuroo said. “You’re cheating, Sawamura, but I’m not going to complain. Gimme.”

“I’m not cheating. One’s from Suga. You can’t even cheat at birthday gifts!”

Sugawara made him chocoballs with dark chocolate and Sawamura had gotten him a book on Quidditch brooms. It looked really nerdy with lots of equations they had probably learned in Arithmancy. Bokuto didn’t know how you could make broomsticks lame, but Sawamura just managed to. Kuroo seemed to like it, though.

“Thanks,” Kuroo said, practically grinning from ear to ear.

“Happy birthday!” Bokuto shouted.

“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Sawamura said suddenly, looking meaningfully at Bokuto. “You were really down a lot of this week. Usually it’s a few hours at most.”

He remembered what Shirofuku said. He wondered if now was the time to broach the subject.

Just do it, he thought. They’re your friends. Just talk to them.

Bokuto took a long sip of his butterbeer. “Yeah. About that. Um. I wanted to talk to you guys about—“

“Tetsurou!”

The three turned their heads and saw Daishou and Mika, who was wearing a really cute sweater and colored jeans.

Bokuto remembered the morning he was down. Shirofuku’s friends had been talking about the Daishou and Mika. They were a couple, proper and official and everything.

Bokuto wondered why a pretty girl like Mika would date someone like Daishou. Bokuto wondered why Kuroo would be friends with someone like Daishou. Actually, Bokuto wondered why anyone even _looked_ at Daishou.

Kuroo smiled brightly when he saw Daishou, who handed him a gift.

“Happy birthday,” Daishou said. “Mika helped pick it out as thanks for getting us together.”

Kuroo nodded stiffly, not looking up as he unwrapped the gift. It was quill with a gold plated tip.

“I’ve got a book for you back in the dorms. There’s a good counter charm in there I thought you might like,” Daishou said smugly. “It’s even classified as a defensive spell so you don’t need to get your panties in a twist for using it at Dueling Club.”

Mika gently slapped Daishou’s chest. The Slytherin laughed and snaked an arm around her shoulders, holding her close to his side.

“We’ll celebrate later,” Daishou said with a wicked grin. “I’ve been saving few special bottles in my trunk for this.”

Kuroo grinned back. “Awesome. See you later.”

“Nice seeing you,” Mika said pleasantly, waving before the two walked away.

Kuroo watched them walk away for a while, a weird expression on his face.

“Hey, mate, don’t be upset just because Daishou is dating a cutie,” Bokuto said, trying to cheer up his friend. Kuroo shouldn’t be sad on his birthday, or jealous, or whatever he was. “If he can date a girl that cute, the three of us should be able to get the prettiest girls in school. Shimizu usually turns people down, though..."

Kuroo laughed. “Thanks, mate.”

“I’m going to get some more food,” Sawamura said, standing up. “You guys want anything?”

“Are you treating?” Kuroo asked, grinning. “Or just trying to get out of talking about girls?”

Bokuto perked up. If Sawamura was treating, he was getting two meals. No, three!

And if Sawamura was trying to get out of talking about girls, that was going to make this night even more fun.

“I’m treating _you,_ ” Sawamura said, pointing to Kuroo.

Kuroo looked at Bokuto. “Hey, Bo, what do you want? I’ll place your order.”

Sawamura’s jaw twitched. “Seriously?”

“Great idea!” Bokuto said, grin matching Kuroo’s.

 

* * *

 

Bokuto did not see Kuroo until dinner the next day. He sat down next to Bokuto at the Hufflepuff table, making some of Shirofuku’s friends giggle. They thought Kuroo was cute, handsome, _whatever_. They had asked Bokuto if his friend was single multiple times. Bokuto didn’t really get it. Kuroo was a goof, a dork, not nearly as cool as they thought. Definitely not as handsome and cool as Bokuto, who was also single and available. None of them would ever ask out a Slytherin, anyways.

“I haven’t seen you since last night,” Bokuto said. “You look like hell.”

“My head feels like it’s about to split in half,” Kuroo groaned. “Suguru had half a bottle of fire whiskey and a bottle of this shit vodka he likes.”

Bokuto’s eyes widened. Kuroo wasn’t kidding when he said Syltherins partied hard. “How much of it did you drink?”

“All of it.”

“Just the two of you?” Bokuto squawked. “How are you _alive_?”

“Nah, his roommates were there for a bit, but we moved out to the common room and hung out until four, I think? It all gets hazy after we left his room. I just woke up an hour ago.”

Kuroo smiled, bright and warm, like just the memory was enough to make his hangover worth it. Bokuto remembered feeling the same way after his birthday.

Kuroo slowly filled his plate with food, debating on the pork chops and deciding against it in favor of more mashed potatoes and apple cider. Bokuto refilled his plate with seconds and then nudged Kuroo with his elbow.

“So what’s Daishou the snake like when he’s drunk? Does he get all emotional?”

“Like you?” Kuroo quipped, grinning.

Bokuto ignored that low blow. He had been happy his friends got him drunk for his birthday. It was an emotional moment. So what if he cried?

“Do you have to hold his hair when he pukes?” Bokuto asked.

“The last person I helped when they puked was our team’s seeker. Feint practice destroyed her. She’s good, though. Cool, too.”

“Is she single?”

“I don’t know. Ask her yourself.”

“I was asking for you, mate.”

Kuroo made a face as he picked up a forkful of mashed potatoes.

Bokuto had a full mouth when he heard his name from behind him. Bokuto and Kuroo turned and looked at Akaashi. Now all the girls were looking at him.

“I was wondering if you wanted to practice again,” Akaashi said.

Bokuto frowned and swallowed half-chewed food—thankful he didn’t choke. That would not have been his coolest moment.

“I thought you had an Arithmancy test or something," Bokuto said.

“I do later in the week, but I could use a study break. If you’re not up to it or have other plans, that’s fine. I wasn’t expecting you to be free on such short notice.”

Bokuto looked down at his plate then back at Akaashi. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll meet you at the Pitch.”

Akaashi said they would meet then and walked away.

Kuroo arched an eyebrow at Bokuto, silently asking for an explanation.

Bokuto shrugged. “He’s Ravenclaw's new chaser. His name’s Akaashi.”

“I know who he is,” Kuroo said slowly, like that clearly was not the issue. “Kenma’s friends with him. Why are you practicing with him?”

“You’ve been really busy this term and I asked him to fly with me after our match.”

“You’ve been flying together for a month?”

Bokuto did some quick math in his head. “Well, we only started, like, two weeks ago, but yeah.”

“You never even asked me to fly with you. I would have made time.”

If Bokuto didn’t know better, he would say Kuroo was upset. Or maybe Bokuto didn’t know better. It was hard to read Kuroo sometimes, especially when he had a grumpy-hangover face.

“Let’s practice this weekend, then,” Bokuto said. “All three of us. Ask Kozume, too.”

“Kenma willingly practice?” Kuroo scoffed. “I can try. Even if he can’t come, I’ll be there, Bo.”

Bokuto smiled widely.

 

* * *

 

_Bokuto,_

_It’s great to hear from you! Daichi said you all would be staying on grounds over winter break to work on some project (he’s being weird about the details). I’m going to try and come to Hogsmeade so we can all hang out one afternoon._

_You asked how I “dealt with” being a half-breed. I think it’s hard to compare my situation to yours. To be honest, I didn’t even know nature spirits could have children with humans until I received your letter. I looked into nature spirits and it seems that most of them have gone extinct, or are endangered. I’m sorry to hear that part of our heritage is dwindling._

_Veela are more accepted in society since they appear human most of the time. People like me who have some veela blood look mostly human._

_When veela are angry, they transform into harpy-like creatures. I’ve never done it, but when I was nine, I was spending the night at Daichi’s and we snuck out to go play in the creek and catch fireflies. We got lost and our parents didn’t find us until morning. My mom got so mad at Daichi’s parents for not noticing we were gone that she transformed. She breathed fire and looked like a monster._

_Knowing I can transform into a creature like that if I lose my temper is scary. Even now, when I see her or I look in the mirror, I realize our physical traits are unnatural. For the longest time, I didn’t look in the mirror and see my human traits. I only saw my non-human ones._

_I spoke to my mom about it. Her veela-ness is more obvious than mine—her unnatural beauty is more prominent. Men propose on whims to her and some threaten her if she says no. People aren’t as aggressive with me, but I think that’s also because I’m male. They’re certainly more forward than I would like, though._

_My mom said she never felt less human because of veela blood, she felt more than human. She said she was one hundred percent human, one hundred percent veela, not half and half. She was both._

_Since I’ve gotten older, I think I know what she means. Instead of trying to separate my life and appearance into veela-traits and human-traits, I accepted I had both. I wasn’t less of a human for having veela-traits._

_You’re not any less a human for having the blood of a nature spirit in you. You’re not a monster. You’re more than a human._

_Hopefully that helps._

_I hope you continue to write. Daichi writes often but never mentions much besides Quidditch and class. He doesn’t gossip at all!_

_It’s good to hear from you! Tell Kuroo he’s more than welcome to write too._

_-Sugawara_

_PS: I included some molasses cookies. It’s my mom’s recipe but I haven’t quite nailed it yet so let me know what you think!_

 

* * *

 

Bokuto sat and watched as Kuroo stirred in another ingredient to the potion. It bubbled and frothed as the tiny insect wings were added. Sawamura sat nearby with the animagi book, double-checking their steps. Bokuto twiddled his thumbs and swallowed thickly.

“Hey, guys,” Bokuto said. His voice felt thick, like wet cotton in his mouth, or peanut butter in his throat. “You know the other day at Three Broomsticks, when we were celebrating Kuroo’s birthday and I brought up something, but Daishou interrupted ‘cause he’s a dick?"

Kuroo looked up from the potion and nodded, purposefully ignoring the snide remark about Daishou. Sawamura gently set the book aside, not closing it, because closing it meant opening it again and dealing with the animal’s screaming.

“Sometimes—“ Bokuto licked his lips and messed up his hair nervously. He wished Shirofuku were there. He wished Sugawara were there to explain it with more eloquent words. “Sometimes I don’t feel human. Sometimes I just feel—I don’t know—like a monster?”

Kuroo pushed his eyebrows together. “Why would you say that?”

Bokuto looked at him dumbly. “’Cause I can turn into an owl?”

Kuroo’s eyebrows pushed even further together, like he didn’t think that was a problem at all.

“And sometimes,” he added, more slowly, more hesitant to admit it, “I think I'm forcing you two to become monsters like me by doing this.”

Bokuto looked down at the ground. He didn’t want to see their reactions.

“You’re not forcing us,” Sawamura said. “And you’re not a monster.”

“But I still felt that way! I still do sometimes!” Bokuto jumped to his feet and began to pace, feeling Sawamura and Kuroo watch him. “I feel like I’m making you guys do this dangerous thing. You wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t mention being lonely when I transform, yeah?”

“Probably not,” Sawamura admitted. “But we want to. We want to help however we can.”

“Do you still think that way?” Kuroo asked suddenly. “That you’re a monster?”

“I’m trying not to.” Bokuto stopped pacing and looked at Kuroo, looked at Sawamura, looked at the ground. “Everyone keeps telling me I’m not, but it’s hard. I still feel weird. Like I’m not human.”

More than human, that’s what Sugawara had said.

“You know how my head gets.”

Sawamura nodded in understanding. Kuroo stirred the cauldron.

“We know it’s dangerous,” Kuroo said calmly. “But we’re going to do it anyways. And whatever happens, we’re in it together. We’re all to blame, or no one’s to blame.”

“Together, or not at all,” Sawamura agreed.

Kuroo smiled, obviously liking that. He looked at Bokuto. “Okay?”

Bokuto sucked in a deep breath. He figured there were worse ways this could have gone, but no better way it could have gone, so maybe this was a success.

He nodded. “Okay.”

“You don’t sound convinced,” Kuroo said with a teasing grin.

With a smile, Boktuo said, “Okay,” and he believed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Confession time: When I was writing the first fic in this series, Trouble Comes in Three, I knew Bokuto was associated with owls but I forgot which type so I went ahead and made it a snowy owl because of his black and white hair (and when I think of owls in Harry Potter, I think of snowy owls because of Hedwig). Halfway through writing With Fangs Bared, I realized Bokuto is a great horned owl in Haikyuu!! and I was too lazy to go back and change it so he's a snowy owl.


	4. Chapter 4

The potion required mandrake leaves that had been in their mouths for a full lunar cycle. Kuroo and Bokuto snapped off a few leaves during Herbology when their professor was busy cleaning up the pots Sawamura "accidentally" knocked over.

(“Do I have to be the one to break school property?” Sawamura asked with a sigh.

“We break stuff all the time in Herbology,” Bokuto said. “We get told to clean it up ourselves. We even know the procedure for hazardous waste! The professor will have to help you.”

“We hope,” Kuroo said. “Worst case scenario, we borrow Suguru’s master key to the greenhouses and take notes for him for a month.”)

But mandrake leaves were only one component to finish the potion. The leaves had to be placed in their mouths after the potion bathed in the light of the full moon for an hour. At the next full moon, they bathed the potion again and stirred in the leaves.

Then, after all of that, they had to drink nearly the entire nasty potion. A small portion was saved for the lightning storm, where they would cast their final enchantment and drink the last of the potion and complete the process.

The full moon was two nights away and they had to figure out a plan to sneak outside with a cauldron full of potion and not get caught for an hour.

They made their plans in library, the three huddled over a poor representation of school grounds made of their books, candy boxes, and a few bones Bokuto had at the bottom of his bag. Their Charms textbook was the lake, a stack of Transfiguration books was the school, and a chocolate frog card of Merlin was the Whomping Willow. The portrait of Merlin on their chocolate frog card gave them a disapproving look so they put his portrait face down.

Kuroo took a scroll out of his bag and rolled it out. “I made this during Astronomy the other night,” he said. “It shows where the moon is over the grounds.”

Bokuto leaned further onto the table, covering half the forest, represented by loose jelly slugs. He asked, “Prefects start rounds at eleven, right?”

Sawamura nodded. “They come out of this side of the castle sometime around half past midnight,” he said, pointing to the eastern side, “and follow this path. They go down to the Pitch, to the lake, and around the castle before going back inside. It takes about an hour, maybe a bit more if they’re taking their time.”

Kuroo consulted his diagram. “These are the places without a lot of trees where we could get moonlight and the prefects will see all of them at some point.”

“But it’s dark,” Sawamura argued. “If we find a spot that’s far enough away from where they walk, they shouldn’t see us.”

“Each prefect walks a bit different,” Kuroo said. “Some don’t go the whole way down to the Pitch and others skip going to the lake, cutting across the hills by the greenhouses early.”

“Right…” Sawamura worried at bottom his lip with his thumb.

“Can we just wait until three or four in the morning?” Bokuto asked. “That way prefects will be done.”

Kuroo shook his head again, tapping his astronomy diagram. “The moon will be too low. It needs to be the middle of the night.”

Bokuto scanned the makeshift map with an intense expression. “So I have an idea that is either stupid or brilliant.”

“Go for it,” Kuroo said, leaning back.

Bokuto tapped the top of pile of Transfiguration books—the castle. Kuroo’s eyes widened. He glanced up and saw Sawamura grinning.

“That could work,” Sawamura said. He looked Kuroo. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Kuroo confirmed.

 

* * *

 

Kuroo cast the spell to seal the top of the cauldron with a lid. He slowly tilted it over an empty cauldron, testing the spell, but the potion did not slip out and the lid did not budge. They were good to go. He nodded at Sawamura and Bokuto, who promptly transformed into an owl and rested on Sawamura’s shoulder.

Sawamura opened the door to the girls’ bathroom and poked his head out.

“All clear,” Sawamura said, holding open the door for Kuroo, who picked up the cauldron and lugged it out of the room.

Sawamura carried all three of their broomsticks as he walked down the hall, Kuroo following closely behind.

The prefects should have been on the northern side of the castle, near Gryffindor and Ravenclaw Tower. The moving staircases would keep them busy long enough for Sawamura, Kuroo, and Bokuto to cut through the first floor corridors and outside to the courtyard.

Thankfully, they made it out with any portraits causing a ruckus, or worse, Peeves.

Once outside in the courtyard, Bokuto jumped off of Sawamura’s shoulder and flew up into the sky to circle the castle and confirm the prefects weren’t outside.

Thankfully, the sky was clear of clouds, the full moon bright overhead. It cast long, spindly shadows from the near naked trees, like dark fingers crawling out of the forest up towards the castle. The cool air was dry and crisp, and Kuroo inhaled it deeply. 

Kuroo carefully set down the cauldron as Sawamura began to hand out their brooms.

It hardly took a few minutes for Bokuto return, transforming into a human and taking his broom from Sawamura.

“We good?” Sawamura asked.

“We’re good,” Bokuto confirmed.

Bokuto mounted his broom then held out his free hand. Kuroo carefully handed him the cauldron, helping Bokuto tuck it under his arm like a quaffle. It was larger and far heavier than a quaffle and the veins of Bokuto’s arm and hand were visible under the strain. 

Bokuto was a chaser and the strongest amongst them. He had the best chance to carry the cauldron to the roof of the castle. Just in case, Sawamura and Kuroo would fly below him.

They thought about charming the cauldron to levitate, but decided to only do that if it was falling. They didn’t want the sticking charm to come undone. Kuroo explained that charms could interact and be incompatible, and he didn’t want to take that risk.

The three lifted off the ground into the night sky, making the short flight to the roof over the Great Hall. The edges of the roof were steep, but the very top was relatively flat, enough so that they did not have to worry about slipping and falling to their deaths. 

The stars were bright above them and the moon was glowing overhead, reflecting on the lake. Wind whistled and shook the branches of the naked trees; it was cold, sending chills down their spines. Kuroo could still so clearly remember the last time he had flown over Hogwarts this late at night. It was in first year when he challenged Sawamura to a race the night after flying lessons. 

Bokuto was the first to land, kneeling down to gently set the cauldron down, before Kuroo and Sawamura followed. They made sure their brooms would not roll on the slight incline, using the rough edges of the roof tiles to their advantage. 

Sawamura took an hourglass out of his pocket, holding it ready. Kuroo pointed his wand at the lid of the cauldron and cast the reversal charm. With a nod at Sawamura, he removed the lid.

Sawamura flipped the hourglass.

They had to expose the potion for exactly one hour, down to the minute. The seconds, as far as Kuroo could tell, were a bit more forgiving.

“Now what?” Bokuto asked as the moon shined over the potion. 

“Now we wait,” Kuroo said.

And wait they did.

They didn’t dare cast a lighting charm in fear that the prefects on duty would see it so they laid on the roof, their eyes slowly adjusting to the dark. In Astronomy, they often used their telescopes to look at planets far away, but so rarely did they gaze up at the sky without aide. The universe seemed much larger when it was not zoomed in; the darkness seemed more vast, almost never ending. 

When the hour began to approach its end, they carefully watched the hourglass and prepared to re-seal the cauldron.

With the cauldron sealed off, it was time for the leaves.

“Don’t knock out my teeth, Bo,” Kuroo teased, grinning. He had complete confidence in Bokuto to cast the sticking charm properly. “I’m too young for dentures. Too pretty, too.”

Bokuto winked. “You’re not prettier than me.”

“On three?” Sawamura asked, looking at Kuroo.

Kuroo nodded.

Sawamura counted: “One, two, three—“

Kuroo put the leaf in his mouth.

It was horribly bitter and tasted vaguely of festering mold and dirt, making Kuroo purse his lips and his entire body shake as if to tell him spit it out, spit it out, _spit it out._ His entire mouth felt dry from it and he swore he would never taste again. He would taste bitter leaf forever.

He glanced over at Sawamura, who put a hand to his mouth and gagged, retching with a jerk.

“Don’t throw up before I can cast the spell!” Bokuto said. “Hurry up and move your hand, too, or you’re gonna get stuck like that.”

Sawamura glared at him.

Kuroo would have laughed if he wasn’t worried about choking on a damn leaf.

Kuroo lifted his tongue and held the leaf on the top of his mouth for several seconds. When he lowered his tongue, it was stuck. He jerked his head at Bokuto, who pointed his wand at Kuroo’s mouth and cast the incantation.

Kuroo reached into his mouth and tugged at the leaf, but it did not budge or rip. He could still taste it. Worse, he could feel it, like peanut butter that he had no milk to wash down only it was dry and scratchy. The stem was the worst, pressed right against the back of his teeth, rubbing uncomfortably against his palate.

Sawamura opened his mouth, looking like he may throw up on Bokuto, who pointed his wand and cast the spell again. Sawamura reached into his mouth to check the leaf. It too was stuck.

“Do you think there are potions that remove taste?” Sawamura asked. Before Kuroo could answer, Sawamura added, “I’m asking Michimiya in Arithmancy tomorrow. I’ll say one of you two hexed me as a prank.”

“Don’t throw us under the carriage!” Bokuto shouted.

“I don’t blame you, Sawamura,” Kuroo said, his body convulsing again in disgust. “Merlin, this is bloody awful.”

“Maybe we’ll get used to it?”

“Doubt it.”

“C’mon,” Bokuto said, hoisting the cauldron up and under his arm, the sealing charmed still firmly in place. “Let’s get back. I want to get some sleep tonight.”

 

* * *

 

More than once, Kuroo, Sawamura, or Bokuto had to run from class to check on the potion. Kuroo and Sawamura were in Arithmancy when Bokuto had a free period, meaning it was Bokuto that had to sprint from History of Magic to the first floor girls’ bathroom to add the rotten root and stir the potion counterclockwise exactly ten and a half times.

Kuroo wondered if it would be easier to skip class, but that was not possible for any number of reasons. He was already falling asleep despite drinking more invigoration draughts than he should. There were too many late nights checking on the potion, too many rounds, too many study sessions run over, and too many late night practices with his team or with his friends.

It was quite exhausting.

He must have been looking particularly ragged for Kenma to say something as they sat in the southern corridor between classes.

“You should come practice with us again tonight,” Kuroo said. “It was fun last time you came.”

Kenma continued to play his game. “No. It’s too cold. And even my team’s practices are shorter than what you do with Bokuto and Akaashi.”

“Just a few goals, c’mon,” Kuroo urged.

Kenma said nothing.

Kuroo wondered if he had chocolate frogs in his bag. He’s pretty sure Bokuto stole them. He began to look anyways.

“Are you really staying here over break?” Kenma asked suddenly.

Kuroo kept looking through his bag. “Yeah. We’re working on this potion. Plus they needed prefects to volunteer to stay behind.”

“What are you doing exactly?” Kenma asked. “I saw you sprinting from Potions the other day and you don’t have class after that. And you look exhausted. It’s making you uglier.”

“Don’t get easy on me,” Kuroo said sarcastically. He didn’t see any chocolate frogs, but he found a sugar quill that was vaguely sticky. He made a face when he touched it. Kuroo added, “Just say you’d rather me not sneak around and spend more time with you. We both know you’re thinking it.”

“Ew.”

Kuroo grinned at his friend. “You know you’re going to miss me over Christmas break.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, are you.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

 

* * *

 

The first snow of the year, Bokuto wanted to spread his wings and fly, and Kuroo and Sawamura were not going to deny him the opportunity. They didn’t always watch Bokuto transform and fly around, but more often than not they did. It was amazing watching Bokuto transform. Kuroo knew he lived in a world of magic, but Bokuto’s ability was in a league of it’s own. Soon, Kuroo and Sawamura would join him.

They circled the lake until they were far away from the castle and the well-traveled paths, away from prying eyes. They melted what little snow was on the ground then Kuroo and Sawamura spread out a blanket and charmed some tiny blue flames in jars to keep them warm.

Once they were settled, their Arithmancy homework ready to be tackled, Bokuto rubbed his hands together and spread out his arms. He ran off, transforming as he went, seamlessly flying into the sky as a snowy owl.

Kuroo wondered how something so fantastic upset Bokuto so much.

“What kind of animal do you want to be?” Sawamura asked as they watched Bokuto disappear into the forest.

“I think the more important question is: what kind of animal do you think you’ll be?” Kuroo replied. “But to answer both. I would want to be a bird like Bo. He says flying is different in his owl form than when he’s on a broom. I want to feel that. If I had to guess what I would be, I would guess some type of canine. Maybe a fox?”

“Wild loyalty. I think that fits.” Sawamura nodded, agreeing with himself, which made Kuroo grin. “I think a bear would be cool.”

Kuroo laughed loudly, practically crackling, the force of his rolling him down onto his side and forcing tears from his eyes.

“Why are you laughing?” Sawamura shouted.

“No reason,” Kuroo said, calming himself just enough to talk without bursting out laughing again. “It’s just so _manly_ , Sawamura.”

Sawamura leaned back on his hands and tilted his head up, looking at the sky. “I guess I get what you mean about a bird being nice.”

“Maybe you’d be a stag,” Kuroo mused. “Since you like manly things like bears.”

Sawamura glared at him, but the look only lasted a few seconds, quickly easing away to his normal expression.

“As long as its something most animals won’t want to eat or Suga won’t laugh at, I don’t think I’ll care,” Sawamura said.

“Are you planning on telling anyone else, besides Sugawara?”

Sawamura thought for a moment then shook his head. “Not at the moment. Maybe in the future. You?”

“Kenma,” Kuroo said. “My cat and the human, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Sawamura echoed, amused. More serious, he asked, “Not Daishou?”

“You _want_ me to tell Suguru?”

“No,” Sawamura replied quickly, like that was never a possibility. (Kuroo figured it wasn’t.) “I just figured you would. You two are close. You’re… friends.”

“About that,” Kuroo said, keeping his voice vague and clear of anything that would lead Sawamura to the right conclusion. “I don’t know if I think of him as a friend anymore.”

Sawamura frowned, his eyebrows pressing together. The lines on his face were hard, made him seem older, more mature, not like a fifteen year old ignoring his Arithmancy homework. For a moment, he understood why Michimiya looked at Sawamura so much.

“Did something happen?” Sawamura asked, concern obvious.

Sawamura may not like Daishou, Kuroo figured, but Sawamura was a good friend who would listen despite that.

“Nothing happened,” Kuroo said. “At least, not any one thing. It’s a lot of things.”

“That’s… vague.” Kuroo nodded in acknowledgement, but he did not respond. He didn’t know if he was ready to explain more than that. Sawamura gave him several seconds of silence then hesitantly said, “If you ever want to talk about it, whatever it is, I’m here.”

Kuroo nodded more stiffly this time. “Thanks, mate. Now, let’s do our homework before Bo comes back with a dead squirrel or something.”

Sawamura laughed, but with Bokuto, it was a very real concern.

 

* * *

 

There was little to worry about for a few days besides the usual fear that they messed up the animagi potion, were caught trying to break the law by making the potion, and normal things most teenagers went through like OWLs and prefect duties.

Then there was the Gryffindor-Slytherin match.

Kuroo and Sawamura promised to have a clean match, but Kuroo said he couldn’t speak for his teammates. Sawamura laughed and said he felt the same about Tanaka, the new beater on his team.

As they prepared to walk onto the Pitch, Kuroo’s eyes drifted towards their seeker.

Suzumeda Kaori was thin with awkward, lanky arms, the perfect build for a younger seeker. She would grow into her limbs and height given time.

She was kind and accepting—traits most people did not associate with a Slytherin, but she was not stupid, carefully choosing whom to trust. Kuroo hoped he earned her trust after holding her hair when she puked after feint practice.

Kuroo watched her grip tighten and loosen around her broom, a sleek hazelnut broom with a dark stain and well trimmed twigs that she surely cared for regularly.

It was her first game. She was even younger than Kuroo had been during his first match. He had been a fourth year when he joined; she was a third year.

Kuroo approached her. “The captain last year had all of these dramatic, pre-game speeches about snakes.”

Suzumeda looked up at him. “Yeah?” she asked, trying so hard to keep her voice even.

Kuroo respected that, respected that need for appearance, especially when they were about to face their opponent. She wanted to be strong and unbreakable. It was an admirable goal.

“Yeah,” Kuroo said. “Stuff about fangs and venom and scales. Really cheesy clichés. He always told our seeker that it was everyone else’s job to poison the enemy slowly, to score points and get a lead, and it was the seeker’s job to land the final blow and end it.”

“That is cheesy.” Suzumeda laughed. Her grip on her broomstick loosened and stayed loose. She looked over at him and smiled nervously. “Is it bad that I kind of like it?”

“No. I do too.” He tossed an arm around her shoulders, cheerfully said, “Let’s go kill some lions,” and they began to walk out of the underbelly of the stand to the grassy Pitch.

Slytherin won thanks to Suzumeda, who was hoisted up onto Kuroo’s shoulders like a small child. He held onto her thighs to steady her and her hands gently gripped the top of his head for balance.

He hoped she felt like she was on the top of the world. It was her first match on the team and they won because of her. Kuroo was going to make damn sure she knew that.

 

* * *

 

Kuroo was surprised it took him so long to try the prefects’ bath. It was only open to the prefects, the head boy and girl, and the Quidditch captains. It was an elusive thing of wonder, according to his rounds partner, Aihara, who said she went quite often.

He had heard rumors about the bathroom from his previous Quidditch captain, who said he always treated himself to a bath there after a victory before returning to the common room for the party.

One night, after an extended study session to make up for all the sessions he skipped while working on animagi things, he decided to stop by the bath. He went back to his room for a change of clothes then made his way to the bathroom.

The bathroom was on the fifth floor, four doors to the left of a statue. The door only opened to a password. The password changed every month, but Kuroo knew what it was; it was posted in the prefect’s lounge, which was perfect for a between-class catnap.

Inside was the largest bathtub Kuroo had ever seen. He would hesitate to even call it a tub. It was more like a small swimming pool, a large golden box beneath the marbled floors that was surrounded by levers, dials, knobs, and pulleys. Several fluffy ottomans and sleek tables were scattered throughout the room, which had an excessive amount of gold-colored objects. Kuroo wondered if it was real gold.

On the far wall, there was a stained-glass portrait with a golden frame. A blonde mermaid lounged against a barnacle-encrusted rock, the waves lapping at her large pink tale. She was combing her wavy hair with spiky seashell, each brush stroke shifting her hair and showing her bare breasts.

“Well, hello,” she said, voice silky smooth. She set down her comb and leaned forward, like she may just come out of the portrait. “You’re new _and_ handsome.”

Kuroo shifted. He didn’t know how he felt about bathing in front of a portrait, especially a flirty, half naked mermaid that was looking him up and down and humming in approval.

Merlin, was this how girls felt when guys looked at them? Kuroo was going to tell Bokuto to stop next time they lounged by the great lake so he could watch older girls swim in their bikinis at end of term when the water was warm.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” the mermaid said. “I won’t peek.” She giggled into her hand.

Part of him wanted to turn away, to walk right out of that room, but he was tired. Practice and rounds had worn him to the bones this past week and he still had an Ancient Runes assignment to revise before tomorrow. Besides, he only got drunk to celebrate beating Gryffindor; he deserved more than a hangover.

Kuroo walked into the room, spotting a bench with several clean, fluffy bathrobes and towels, and began to shed his clothing.

True to her word, the mermaid lounged against her rock and resumed brushing her hair, much more concerned about the knots there than Kuroo. Curly hair like that must be a pain to brush, he thought.

Once he was naked, he wrapped a towel around his waist and approached the intricate bathtub.

There were no less than forty different spigots and knobs. He knelt on the ground and began turning every knob and lever he could find. Some pulled, some twisted, some pressed like buttons. The smart thing to do would be to go through each lever systematically and determine what it did. But his knees ached against the marble floor and all he wanted was a hot bath to sink into.

Water began to flow into the large tub and bubbles formed. It smelled like a mix of citrus, roses, pine, and apples. He had clearly pressed and pulled too many golden fixtures, but he did not know how to drain the water or how to start over.

Then he realized he had no idea how to stop the water.

“ _Shit_.”

His curse caused the mermaid to pause and turn her attention to him. “Try the one on your left,” she said.

Kuroo tried a large, spiraled knob, which made the water shoot out faster. He looked up at the mermaid, who had turned so she was oriented the same way as Kuroo. She pointed to their right, turned back around, and said, “Sorry! I meant the right.”

Kuroo exhaled and tried the green knob on his right.

Orange bubbles rose out of the bath and popped in different tones.

“The teal one?” the mermaid suggested, suddenly less sure.

That one made the amount of water in the tub double. It was mere inches away from overflowing.

Kuroo looked at the mermaid, not sure what to do.

This was just fantastic. This was just like the time he and Bokuto flooded the greenhouses in first year when they forgot to turn off the hoses. This was also like the time in Transfiguration when their glasses-turned-birds flew out into the hall and began to crash on people’s heads. This was also like the time—

Kuroo had messed up so much, he realized with a disheartened groan.

“I have a proposition,” the mermaid said. “I won’t tell the house elves your name when they come to clean up your mess, but you owe me. It’ll be our little secret.”

She winked and smiled. Kuroo wondered if she did all of this on purpose.

“You don’t know my name to tell them.”

She gasped. “How could I have forgotten to ask a handsome young man such as yourself? And since you must be wondering, _I_ am Anthemoessa.”

She tossed her hair confidently over her shoulder, showing off her breasts. She was quite beautiful with a gentle roll of fat on her stomach and stretch marks along her sides. Her pink tail was the same color as her painted lips and the seawater made her skin glisten.

Totally not Kuroo’s type, though.

Kuroo coughed into his hand and politely adverted his eyes. He had no interest in looking, anyways, and it felt rude even if she was just an animated portrait.

“Tetsurou,” he said. “My name is Kuroo Tetsurou.”

“Tetsurou.” The mermaid hummed, the sound deep and rumbling. “I like it. Come visit me again. Perhaps without the towel?” She smiled and lowered his eyes to his waist. “I think that will make me forgive you for flooding my home.”

She definitely did this on purpose.

Kuroo headed over to his clothes to begin getting dressed. “We’ll see.”

“It’s a deal, then. Until next time.”

 

* * *

 

“ _You flooded the_ —“

Kuroo shoved a hand over Bokuto’s mouth. “Shush!”

“Sorry,” Bokuto muttered behind Kuroo’s hand. Kuroo drew his hand back and Bokuto whispered eagerly, “And you just _left_?”

Kuroo shrugged. “The mermaid said she would cover for me.”

“Now there’s a mermaid?”

“Stain-glass portrait.”

“Is it a mermaid or a merperson? Because they look very different.”

“Mermaid,” Kuroo said, rolling his eyes because Bokuto meant mermaids were pretty and merpeople looked like animated, brittle seaweed. “She was really confident in her body.”

Bokuto practically melted. “I wish I was a prefect. I know I gave you and Sawamura shit, but I am really jealous now.”

“Quidditch captains have access, too.”

Bokuto perked up. “Really?”

“Apparently.”

“Then there’s still hope!”

 

* * *

 

When Arashi rearranged rounds so Kuroo and Sawamura were paired together, Kuroo felt that something was up. Neither Kuroo nor Sawamura asked to be paired together. They were perfectly fine working with their partners, Michimiya and Aihara.

When Arashi showed up at the main foyer to join Kuroo and Sawamura, Kuroo put on a pleasant smile while Sawamura shifted his weight anxiously.

Shit, Kuroo thought. He didn’t know Arashi was coming too.

Had Arashi found the potion in the bathroom? Did Arashi know it belonged to them? Did he realize they used him to steal from Professor Nekomata?

But Arashi said nothing about the potion, nor about anything related to animagi. He asked about Quiddtich, and OWLs, and how they were handling the stress. He asked if they needed to take on less rounds. It was completely pleasant conversation, but Kuroo knew Arashi and Arashi had to have a reason for this.

He was proven right when they approached the Quidditch Pitch.

When they reached the bottom of the hill, Arashi went quiet. Without hesitating, he stepped forward and disappeared in the blink of an eye. 

Kuroo and Sawamura looked at each other and Kuroo was certain their expressions were mirrors of confusion.

“Am I going crazy?” Sawamura asked, looking back to where Arashi had just stepped, had just _disappeared_. 

“I—“ Kuroo stopped himself.

Arashi couldn’t have apparated. There wasn’t the audible crack. Besides, there were spells that prevented apparation on the grounds. Only select professors and the head master could break that rule.

Kuroo wanted to stop and think for a moment, but Sawamura was a Gryffindor after all and he stepped forward fearlessly. He disappeared.

Kuroo took in a deep breath and followed.

It was like walking into another world.

The Pitch was bright with warm, yellow light that had not been there moments ago. The light came from giant orbs suspended in the sky at different heights, each shifting slightly but never straying far. Several dozen students, no more than fifty total, sat huddled together in the stands with blankets and thick coats. They shouted as streaks of color flew through the air.

No, not just color. It was Quidditch players, two full teams. One team wore a plum color and the other wore white, but they did not look like official uniforms, more like clothes with the same color, each person wearing something different. They were flew through the sky, the small crowd cheering them on, and Kuroo felt something tight like excitement rush across his chest.

This is wonderful, he thought.

Arashi was standing a few feet away, hands in his pockets, grinning at them.

“What is this?” Sawamura asked.

“A barrier,” Kuroo muttered, more to himself than to answer Sawamura.

Kuroo took a few steps back and the lights disappeared along with the sound. He looked up at the night sky and there were no students flying on broomsticks, only the stars and moon.

He stepped forward, back through the barrier. The crowd was cheering as someone made a goal.

“This is some seriously high level charm work,” Kuroo said in awe. “Is this NEWT level?”

“Higher,” Arashi answered.

A booming voice spoke: “And Shirofuku is diving! Has she spitted the snitch?”

“Shirofuku?” Sawamura asked, jaw dropping. He looked at Kuroo, who shook his head. He had no idea what this was, why Shirofuku was playing, or that Shirofuku played Quidditch at all.

Arashi jerked his head, indicating that Sawamura and Kuroo should follow, and began to walk to the entrance to the stands. The cheers of the small crowd were muffled in the belly of the Pitch, but Kuroo could still hear the commenter.

“And it’s a feint!”

Kuroo tuned out the announcer. It was something everyone on the house team learned to do. He was sure Sawamura did the same. Bokuto may not, enjoying the praise every time he caught a pass or scored, but Bokuto was different from most players for more reason than one.

“There’s only seven students that can play on a house team,” Arashi began to explain. “There may be special exceptions. Maybe a team has a few extras to switch things up, but that’s rare at our school. You both know that.”

Kuroo and Sawamura listened intently, even as they began to walk up the stands to join the crowd of students watching the match. Kuroo recognized a few of them. He saw Mika and Shimizu; Akaashi was there too. There were students from every year, from every house, sitting side by side, cheering on the teams in the sky.

“And then the twenty-eight students that get to play for their house team book the Pitch solid most of the year.”

Arashi stopped ten feet away from the onlookers and tilted his head back to watch the game. Kuroo and Sawamura stared at him as he continued, more interested in the explanation than the match.

“Some people manage to play pick up games when the house teams aren’t monopolizing the Pitch, but that’s not enough for people that are competitive. There’s plenty of students that try out for the teams but don’t make it, and they’re not happy waiting for the Pitch to open up so that they _might_ be able to play a game. About a decade ago, some friends got together and organized this.”

“What _is_ this?” Sawamura asked.

“The Midnight Quidditch Cup. It’s a competitive bracket of players that form their own teams and compete. There’s not much at stake—bragging rights, mostly, though I heard there used to be money involved in the past.”

“How have we never heard about this?” Sawamura asked.

“That’s sort of the idea,” Arashi replied. “Most of the people out here are players. There’s a few exceptions—friends and the like—but it’s very close knit. They don’t tell just anyone.”

“You said this has been going on for a decade,” Kuroo pointed out. “But prefects have rounds down here. Someone would have noticed this and reported it.”

Arashi nodded in acknowledgement. “And that’s why I’m bringing you two down here. When this little tournament was thought up about a decade ago, they went to the head boy and girl. They struck a deal. We and the prefects under our orders watch over the matches and keep it a secret. If anything happens or anyone is injured, we tell the professors. Between you and me, I think they know. They let it slid because the head boy and girl watch over every match and keep people safe.”

“If you’re telling us, why aren’t you telling our partners?” Sawamura asked. “Michimiya and Aihara?”

Arashi grinned and pointed.

Kuroo and Sawamura finally looked up at the match. Kuroo stopped listening to Arashi and tuned back in the announcer.

“And Aihara blocks the shot! She tosses back out—Michimiya receives—she’s flying down the Pitch! Her time on the Gryffindor team hasn’t been wasted—“

Kuroo found the two based on the announcer’s commentary. From their positions and actions, he figured Aihara was a keeper and Michimiya was a chaser. More than that, Shirofuku was a seeker and she was damn fast.

Kuroo wondered if Bokuto knew about this.

“They play on an all-girls team,” Arashi said. “I think they’re called Killer Queens. They’re good. They got second in last year’s tournament.”

“So all the prefects know, the head boy and girl know, the professors probably know, but the rest of the school doesn’t?” Sawamura asked. “How is that possible? How do people learn these kind of spells?”

“Practice?” Arashi shrugged. “I don’t know much about the logistics other than when the matches are. They handle the rest themselves.”

“I’m guessing we’re not allowed to tell anyone,” Kuroo said flatly.

“You’ll have to talk to the players. If they decide someone can keep a secret and they like Quidditch enough, they’ll probably be let in.” Arashi looked at them, his face more serious than ever. “As prefects, it’s your job to protect students. The rules are there to protect student so we enforce them. But sometimes, rules need to be broken. Don’t ruin this for them.”

Kuroo looked back at the players in the sky and wondered why anyone would ever think to ruin this.

 

* * *

 

Kuroo and Sawamura debated whether or not to ask Bokuto about the cup. They decided to go to Shirofuku first since, apparently, she was a player and a damn good one at that.

“He doesn’t know,” she said on their way to Arithmancy. “I wanted to tell him, but the group decided he couldn’t be trusted.”

Bokuto had one the biggest secrets at Hogwarts—two now that he was helping Kuroo and Sawamura become animagi—so keeping a Quidditch tournament secret should have been easy. But the rest of the students didn’t know those things and Kuroo could easily see how Bokuto's energy and loud mouth could be seen as untrustworthy.

“Akaashi admitted to the league that he told Koutarou,” Shirofuku said, “but he said Koutarou doesn’t actually know what it is, only it’s name.”

Kuroo remembered seeing Akaashi at the game last night, sitting in the stands. “What happens to people who break the rules, then?”

“Akaashi wasn’t playing this season since he joined the Ravenclaw team, but he was banned from playing in the cup ever again. He can still watch, though.”

“Wow, you guys take this really seriously,” Sawamura said, sounding surprised.

“Arashi told you already. No one can know. As long as the group is small, the prefects can keep an eye on us and the professors can pretend they don’t know what we’re doing.”

Kuroo looked over at Shirofuku. “You should tell Bo. He’d like to fly with you, if he knew.”

Shirofuku blinked slowly then smiled. “I’ll think about it.”

“You’re good, by the way,” Kuroo said with a grin. “Fast as hell. We’re lucky you never joined the Hufflepuff team.”

Shirofuku smiled. “I know.”

 

* * *

 

Kuroo would not hesitate to call Daishou his friend, but he would also easily admit that he cared for the quiet moments with Daishou more than the rest. He cared for the times when they were not talking about Dueling Club, when Daishou was not talking about plans to undermine his opponent with a malevolent smile.

Daishou was always quiet when he cared for his plants. He had an entire section of the professor’s greenhouse to himself. Kuroo sat quietly on a cleared off wooden workbench and watched Daishou trim his hemlock and fertilize his wormwood. Daishou took exquisite care of his poisonous plants, even more so recently. He was planning another cross to try and develop a new plant, one that could be used for antidotes.

Kuroo’s chest tightened as he watched Daishou reach up and wipe the sweat off his head with the back of his wrist, avoiding touching his skin with his dirt covered glove. The greenhouse was awfully humid and hot.

Daishou was not vicious like this. He was not sly or plotting something. He simply _was_ and it was so easy to forget how fundamentally different he was from Kuroo.

“Did you see that notice about meeting with Professor Nekomata?” Kuroo asked conversely.

The notice had been put up that morning and stated that all second, fifth, and seventh year students were to talk to Professor Nekomata before the end of term to talk about their “professional goals.” Second years were beginning to think about which electives to take, fifth years had to decide if they really wanted to go for OWLs in all of their classes or use their time more wisely, and seventh years were facing graduation in a few months.

“Saw it,” Daishou replied, “don’t know why we need to have it.”

Kuroo agreed—Slytherins were ambitious; it was rare to find someone in the house that did not know what they wanted out of life, even at such a young age—but he knew there were exceptions to everything so he saw the merit as well.

“What did you tell him in second year anyways?” Kuroo asked. “Before picking electives?”

“Healer.” Daishou clipped the dead leaves off of his hemlock plant with a serious, concentrated expression. “I changed my mind, though. I just want to do research for St. Mungo’s, not deal with patients.”

“I think Sawamura wanted to do that—be a healer, that is. Not sure if that’s still his plan.”

“And I care about him because?”

Kuroo rolled his eyes.

“Do you still want to risk your life for pointless praise and stupid pride?” Daishou asked.

“Yeah, I still want to be a curse-breaker. And it’s not because of the praise or anything like that. I just want the adventure, the challenge. There’s nothing here for me. I may as well travel.”

Daishou looked up at him. He raised his eyebrows and coolly replied, “Nothing at all?”

Kuroo licked his lips. He thought about Daishou, who was dating Mika, and then thought about Sawamura and Bokuto and Kenma and his parents. He even thought about Suzumeda briefly.

He cared for them all in different ways, but wouldn’t put his dreams on hold for them. Even if Daishou confessed his love, which would never happen, Kuroo would still leave.

He hated being trapped by four walls, hated not knowing what lied in old tombs beneath the ground. He wanted to see the large world and all that it could hold. How could one person be worth all of that?

He couldn’t imagine what it would take—who it would take—for him to give up his dream.

“Nothing at all,” Kuroo said.

 

* * *

 

Kuroo met with Professor Nekomata at the end of the week in his office. The office was small with no windows, lit only by brass lanterns and an iron chandelier with half-melted candles. Shelves lined the walls, stocked with jars of strange ingredients like whole newts or fetal pigs, the most intricate and beautiful potion vials Kuroo had ever seen, and more books than Kuroo could count.

A quick glance at the books would tell you the ones he favored the most, the ones he referenced for the tough test questions that made the ill-prepared curse. The spines of those books were cracked and well used. They were studying poisons now and Kuroo spotted Randolph’s fifth volume on the subject, which was on the verge of falling apart.

“Please, sit down, Kuroo,” Professor Nekomata said, gesturing to the worn leather chair across his desk.

Kuroo made himself comfortable.

“Now, if I’m remembering correctly, you wanted to be a curse-breaker, correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No need for the sir, though it is nice! Is curse-breaking still your plan?”

“Yes.”

Professor Nekomata laughed softly. “I expect no less from you, Kuroo. Let’s see…” He shuffled around some papers before deciding on one. “Gringotts requires NEWTs in Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Potions, Arithmancy, and Ancient Runes. However, the program is competitive and they recommend also having NEWTs in Herbology, Astronomy, History of Magic, and Transfiguration.

“I only take students with O’s, though I have made exceptions in the past. Defense Against the Dark Art and Arithmancy both needs E’s, whereas you can get away with A’s in Charms and Ancient Runes. For the optional courses, Herbology and History of Magic are A’s, whereas Astronomy is an E and Transfiguration is another O.”

Kuroo nodded seriously. He knew all of this.

“How are you studies going?” Professor Nekomata asked, sounding genuinely concerned. “I’m sure it’s a lot with prefect duties and Quidditch, and you’ve always turned down my suggestion of a time turner.”

“I spend the most time on classes that need O’s and E’s.”

“Good idea, though don’t forget the A’s as well. Little details can trip you up.”

“I’m trying to be thorough.”

“Your marks are strong in every subject, but a little help never hurt. It may surprise you to learn this, but like you students, us professors gossip. I know you’re friends with Daishou and I’m sure he would help with Potions if need be. He’s one of the best in your year, right up there with Michimiya, though I must say she’s in a class of her own. Your friend Sawamura in Gryffindor is quite good at Transfiguration, I hear, though I’m sure you know that.”

Nekomata had no idea how good Sawamura was.

Sure, Sawamura had good marks in Transfiguration since first year, maybe even the best in their year, but Sawamura knew so much more than he was ever tested on.

Kuroo understood the potion behind the animagi transformation, but it was Sawamura that did all of the research until they broke into the restricted section. He read every book on human transfiguration he could get his hands on and even managed to force Bokuto into his owl form last year with a strange, complicated spell.

Sawamura knew more about human transfiguration and the subject overall than most seventh years.

“Your fellow prefect Aihara is quite good at Arithmancy. I’m sure you two could barter rounds if you feel the need for some extra help. Arashi would be more than willing to accommodate.” Professor Nekomata pursed his lips in thought then said, “Ah, well, that’s all I can think of at the moment. But how are you doing? Fifth year can be quite hard. It’s a tough age—love, friendship, school; it must be very hard to keep afloat these days.”

Kuroo thought about Daishou. He thought about Sawamura and Bokuto. He thought of Kenma. He thought of the whip of air against his face on his broom; the sharp burn of fire whiskey and the sour stench of the animagi potion in the girls’ bathroom; the rough mandrake leaf on the top of his mouth.

He shrugged. “I’m afloat.”

Professor Nekomata laughed. “Good to hear, boy, good to hear.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am completely incapable of writing Quidditch. Between this series and the one I did for Prince of Tennis, I've written so many Quidditch matches that I don't know how else to describe them. It's actually one of the main reasons I don't think I'll ever finish King of the Pitch, which is mostly about Quidditch!
> 
> I spent a lot of time re-reading With Fangs Bared because I knew I referenced the trio's earlier years at Hogwarts in that fic. There was a scene where Kuroo found Tsukishima in the prefects' bath and said he flooded it during fifth year, so I just had to include that. 
> 
> Also I purposefully put in this line "He couldn’t imagine what it would take—who it would take—for him to give up his dream" because Kuroo does exactly that for Tsukishima in When Tomorrow Comes.


	5. Chapter 5

With their end of term exams finished and handed in, students packed their chests and bags and road in horseless carriages to the train station to be taken home for winter break. The wheels dug divots in the snow and strange hoof prints appeared in front of the tracks out of nowhere. Sawamura had never seen the hoof prints before. Then again, he didn’t think he’d ever seen the carriages in the snow.

A few students always stayed over break, each for their own reasons. Sawamura had never stayed over break and was very excited. He heard Christmas morning was fantastic and the Hogsmeade festival was unforgettable. The fact that Kuroo and Bokuto were with him made it better. Sawamura could feel their mischief and trouble coming in like a storm that he was watching anxiously from the porch, waiting for the downpour.

As the carriages carried students down by the dozen, Sawamura and Bokuto were on one of the large hills making a snowman. Kuroo came jogging down the hill, kicking up snow.

“Finish saying good-bye to Kozume?” Bokuto asked. He was rolling a ridiculously large snowball around, hoping to make it even more ridiculous, while Sawamura stood nearby to levitate it to place. The snowball was as large as the jack-o-lanters at Halloween, which Bokuto always wanted to try climbing into.

Kuroo nodded. “Yeah. Gave him presents to send back home and everything. He was with Akaashi so I didn’t stick around and embarrass him too much.”

“I don’t believe that for a second,” Sawamura said.

“There may have been _minor_ embarrassment.” Kuroo grinned. “I know Kenma’s limits. We grew up together, after all.”

“Never stopped Suga.”

“Is he still coming to Hogsmeade for the festival?” Bokuto asked. “He mentioned it in his letter but we haven’t written in awhile because of exams.”

“As far as I know, he’s coming.”

Kuroo walked over to Bokuto, helping him push the boulder of a snowball. When Sawamura levitated the ball to add to their snowman, it completely crushed the first segment.

 

* * *

 

The days passed far too quickly for Sawamura’s liking. With a break from classes and from studying for OWLs, they were finally able to have fun and not feel guilty about the hours they were spending away from the library.

They flew around the grounds, Kuroo and Sawamura on their brooms and Bokuto with his wings. There was nothing quite like being egged on to diving into a large pile of powdery, freshly fallen snow. The pile of snow was cold and light, the sudden stop in motion dragging on his stomach in the best of ways, like a roller coaster. Kuroo shook his hair and tackled him back into the snow, shoving it down his clothes, while Bokuto flew overhead, hooting in laughter. It was better than jumping into a pile of crisp, autumn leaves.

One day, Kuroo and Bokuto found massive icicles hanging in the western courtyard and knocked them down with well-placed spells. The icicles did not shatter on impact with the ground. The rods of ice were as long as their arms from their shoulders to the tips of their fingers. So, naturally, the first thing Kuroo and Bokuto did was use them as swords until they shattered in their hands.

At night in the common room, Sawamura and the handful of remaining Gryffindors played Exploding Snap. Michimiya had a knack for it but Sawamura broke her five-game streak with a cheeky grin that made her punch his arm. A game later, a second year lost his eyebrows and Sawamura and Michimiya, as prefects, decided that maybe they should call it a night.

And there was no denying that Hogwarts was beautiful at Christmas. There were large decorated trees around every corner, the air constantly smelled like peppermint, and warm snow fell from the ceiling of the Great Hall. The common room had its own tree, smaller in size, with ornaments that swirled, shrank, and shimmered gold and red.

Despite the overt beauty of Hogwarts at Christmas, Hogsmeade was in a league of its own.

The cobblestone streets were covered with snow and the iron lanterns that flanked the street sides were covered in holly and red ribbons. Snowmen with top hats were enchanted to greet customers, and vendors sold warm chestnuts and hot chocolate. Carolers’ songs seemed to ring and floating lights made the streets warm despite the cold weather.

Several days before Christmas, Sawamura, Kuroo, and Bokuto made their way down to Hogsmeade for the annual Christmas festival. Sawamura thought Hogsmeade couldn’t get better until he saw Sugawara sitting on a bench near the large, gorgeous Christmas tree in the center of the plaza. The tree had golden ornaments and silver garland, and Sugawara looked like he belonged on the top of the tree.

Sugawara was Sawamura’s childhood friend. They lived in the same tiny, all-magical village, their houses right down the street from one another. Sawamura spent his breaks at Sugawara's family bakeries helping with chores and, on rare instances, in the kitchen, which almost always ended in disaster, much to Sugawara's amusement. Though they went to separate schools, they remained close friends.

Every summer, when Kuroo and Bokuto visited, they met with Sugawara, who they had adored instantly. Sugawara had been giving Kuroo and Bokuto Christmas gifts since second year and treats since first.

It only felt natural to see childhood friend next to his Hogwarts friends.

Sugawara jumped to his feet and ran over, hugging Sawamura, then Kuroo and Bokuto in turn. When Sugawara hugged Bokuto, Bokuto spun them around and Sugawara laughed loudly.

“I missed you guys!” Sugawara said earnestly.

“Are you parents with you?” Sawamura asked, looking around.

Sugawara shook his head. “I flooed here. They’re busy at the bakery making Christmas cakes.”

“We have to take you to Three Broomsticks,” Bokuto said, eager. “They have the best butterbeer. Better than that stuff you guys have at your home town!”

“No way,” Kuroo said. “He needs to see the book shop first. Their used books are so cheap, it will make you cry tears of joy.”

“There’s also the antiques shop,” Sawamura added.

“First,” Sugawara said, louder than the rest, “is there a bakery? My mom wants to know. She’s thinking of expanding in a few years and wants me to look at the competition.”

“Madam Puddifoots’ Tea Shop it is,” Bokuto said, already walking.

Sugawara looked at Sawamura and Kuroo, shrugged, then followed after Bokuto.

 

* * *

 

Somewhere along the way, Sugawara and Sawamura were separated from Kuroo and Bokuto. Without Kuroo and Bokuto to drag them around, they took their time, walking slowly and looking at the window fronts. Sugawara admired the robes in the windows and laughed when a child threw a snowball at Sawamura’s face. They talked briefly about classes and their end of term exams, which they had yet to talk about in their near weekly letters.

Sawamura and Sugawara were walking down main street when someone called out, “Sawamura!”

Sawamura looked and saw Michimiya with Shimizu. Michimiya wore an oversized black sweater, or was it a dress? It had long thick sleeves and the bottom came down to her knees. Underneath, she wore floral print stockings and large snow boots.

Her ears were bright red. Sawamura wondered when the last time her hair was short enough to expose the skin to the cold. Certainly a long time ago if she didn’t even think to wear a hat. Her hair had grown slightly since she cut it at the start of the year, the tips now curling, but it was by no means long. She had to use clips to keep it out of her face, though; today they had small blue snowflakes on them.

The girls paused slightly when they spotted Sugawara, but neither looked for long, which was unusual.

“You look cold, Michimiya,” Sawamura said, walking towards the girls.

Michimiya smiled, her breath visible when she exhaled through her mouth in a small laugh.

“My ears feel like they’re going to fall off,” she admitted. “I didn’t think to bring a hat.”

Sawamura reached up, tugged off the hat Sugawara’s mother had knitted him some years ago, and handed it to her. She stared at it, not taking it. Shimizu nudged her gently.

“Just take it.” He frowned and corrected himself, “Well, don’t take it forever. I want it back. You can borrow it?”

She still did not take it.

Sawamura sighed. He took another step towards Michimiya, who stared at him like an owl. He stretched the rim of the hat open, put it awkwardly on her head, and tugged it down.

“There. Better?” Sawamura asked, pulling his hands back.

She tugged it further down and smiled. “It’s warm.” He smiled back, suddenly warm as well. “Thanks, Sawamura.”

When he turned to walk away, she grabbed his wrist, letting go as quickly as she had grabbed it, and said, “Um, Sawamura, do you want to—you don’t have to—but later, do you want to dance together?”

Sawamura paused for only a second to understand what she was asking.

At the Christmas Festival, Hogsemade often played music and people danced. There was no competition, but it was a tradition. Sawamura had never participated himself. He had never been at Hogwarts for the festival. Besides that, he had two left feet, according to Sugawara.

“Uh, I’m not really the best dancer,” Sawamura said, rubbing the back of his head. “Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. Forget I even asked!”

Michimiya grabbed onto Shimizu’s wrist and the two walked away in a hurry. She didn’t look back over his shoulder and wave at him like she usually did so Sawamura waved at their backs, his muscles moving without thought.

When she was gone, Sugawara slid up behind him and rested his chin on Sawamura’s shoulder. Sawamura jumped but Sugawara did not move.

“Who was she?” Sugawara asked, eyes following Michimiya and Shimizu. “She’s cute. They’re both cute, actually, but they didn’t look at me…”

“Not everyone has to look at you just because you’re part veela, Suga.”

“They don’t have to, but…” Sugawara hummed pensively.

Sawamura turned and faced Sugawara, who smiled pleasantly.

“The one with the short hair’s my teammate,” Sawamura answered. “The other one is Shimizu.”

“Teammate? You mean Michimiya, the one in your letters?”

“Yeah.”

“You never wrote about any of _that_. You’re so oblivious, Daichi.” Sugawara pivoted and began to walk away, saying, “Kuroo and Bokuto just walked into Three Broomsticks, by the way. You guys keep raving about their butterbeer and I’m excited to try it.”

Sawamura followed Sugawara to the pub.

His ears were already starting to get cold without his hat. He shrugged up his shoulders as if his coat could reach his ears (it couldn’t) and shoved his hands deeper into his pockets as if that would warm his hands (it wouldn’t) and wondered if he should have given up his hat (it was worth it).

 

* * *

 

They drank butterbeer until they were warm and sedated, laughing as Sugawara told them stories of flight lessons at Beauxbatons. Students there learned to fly brooms in first year. However, unlike Hogwarts, they also learned to fly the schools’ herd of pegai during fifth year. Some peagasi were more stubborn than others and flew students over the lake before bucking the students off. Everyone’s worst fear was a pegasus relieving itself overheard.

Students that had never seen Sugawara were staring openly. A Hufflepuff girl even came over asked Bokuto to introduce her to his friend. Sugawara quite brazenly told her he was not from here and would be leaving soon and he was very sorry. The girl quietly left, but looked over her should at Sugawara one last time.

“I’m good looking too!” Bokuto groaned. “Why don’t cute girls approach me like that? Oh, right. Veela thing.”

“Does that happen a lot?” Kuroo asked, looking at Sugawara.

That was right, Sawamura thought. Every time they had all been together, they were never in a public setting like this. They never saw how people looked at Sugawara.

“All the time,” Sugawara said. “Some people are naturally drawn to me, but it’s only physical.”

“Does everyone?” Kuroo asked.

“It depends on the person. My attraction isn’t as strong as my mother’s since she’s half and I’m quarter. People attracted to men are definitely more likely to look than lesbians or straight men, but it does happen. The attraction’s not natural. It’s magic. Some people are just more susceptible than others, regardless of intention or sexuality. The only way someone will definitely not be interested based on my veela blood alone are those in love. That’s it’s own kind of magic.”

Sugawara leaned back against his chair and sunk down a little. “You know, most teenage boys would love having girls and boys chatting them up, but it feels like I’m manipulating them. So I’m just blunt about it when people approach me like that. It’s better that way.”

Bokuto patted his shoulder. “Hey, I think you’re pretty great. And not just because you’re pretty. Because you are pretty. I’m not into dudes, but I’d be into you.”

Kuroo drank his butterbeer, not chiming in like Sawamura expected. Kuroo’s eyes were elsewhere.

Sawamura tapped Sugawara’s ankle with his foot. “Tell that story about that girl that tried to hook up with you in the forest.”

Sugawara groaned. “Daichi, that’s horrible. It was so awkward!”

“What happened?” Bokuto asked eagerly. “Details!”

Sugawara sighed and ran a hand through his silky hair. “Last summer, there was this girl visiting her grandparents, who lived down the street. She was seventeen, I think? She had graduated that year.”

“She was in Ravenclaw,” Sawamura confirmed.

“I offered to show her around just to be nice since she was there for the summer. So we got on our brooms and flew into the forest and at one point we get off and sit on these rocks to watch this little creek. As we’re sitting, she just gets in my lap.”

“Mate!” Bokuto shouted. “That is the _opposite_ of a problem.”

Kuroo nearly spat out his butterbeer in laughter.

“She was a pretty girl, but I’m not that type of person despite my promiscuous blood.” Sugawara smiled bitterly for a moment then went on, “So I grabbed her waist and I pushed her away as gently as I could. And I swear to you, I said—“

Sugawara stared laughing at the memory, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe it. Bokuto was literally on the edge of his seat.

“So he says,” Sawamura said, “’I—I, uh, left the stove on. I need to go.’”

“And I just left her!” Sugawara pressed his forehead to the table. “I didn’t know what else to say. I’m a baker so at least it wasn’t completely awful.”

“No, that sounds pretty awful,” Kuroo laughed.

“She made it back okay!” Sugawara lifted his head. “Daichi, this is all your fault for making me relive what was the most awkward moment of my life to date. I will not forget this. You are no longer getting cookies for Christmas.”

“I’ll just steal from Kuroo and Bokuto,” Sawamura replied with a shrug.

Sugawara punched his arm. “That’s cheating!”

Sawamura laughed. They all knew damn well that he would be getting cookies from Sugawara, one way or another.

 

* * *

 

Come mid-afternoon, the festival had truly begun. People from the town and surrounding area had gathered to celebrate the holiday season. Kids ran and played in the snow, teenagers like themselves mingled about with friends, and adults watched on with eyes that wished they were young like that.

They played several Christmas songs and a few upbeat acoustic songs. Some of the songs Sawamura recognized from the radio station Sugawara played in the kitchen of his family’s bakery. The songs were heavy with guitar and odder instruments that sounded folksy with whimsical lyrics you could feel in your heart if you took the time and actually listened.

Michimiya and Shimizu were dancing together, their fingers laced as they smiled and twirled in a graceful way that only girls could. Shimizu’s dark hair danced with her and whipped up into the air, like a loose skirt during a twirl. Michimiya still had on Sawamura’s hat on and he felt warm watching her dance with her cheeks flushed and eyes alight. Watching her felt like he just took a sip of hot chocolate with extra marshmallows.

Sawamura wondered if he should have been polite and danced with Michimiya. He doubted she would smile like that if he was stepping on her toes and decided he made the right call. She caught his eyes and waved wildly before being swept up in the next verse.

Kuroo and Bokuto danced like they were drunk—Sawamura was pretty sure they weren’t. No, they were just happy and acting stupid, swaying to the music and rolling their hips and shoulders, singing along and getting half the words wrong and just laughing about it.

Sometimes, Kuroo and Bokuto looked like brothers. It was the set of their jaws when someone said something about bad muggle-borns. It was their dark hair. It was the fire in their eyes when they mounted their broomsticks. It was their mannerisms and every little thing about them that was mimicked in the other.

Kuroo spun at the end of the song, laughing loudly. He spotted Sawamura and Sugawara and grinned like a cat, coming over.

Sawamura shook his head, waved his arms, and said, “No, no, I am _not_ ,” but Kuroo grabbed his wrist and dragged him over.

“You too, Sugawara!” Kuroo said.

Sugawara laughed and followed without being forced.

Bokuto tossed his hands into the air and shouted, “Yes, Sawamura! Sugawara!”

Sawamura groaned, wanting to run away, but he was sandwiched between Kuroo and Bokuto, who rolled their hips and shoulders and began shouting lyrics at each other over Sawamura’s shoulder. Sugawara danced alongside them, effortless graceful with no hints of awkwardness in his movements.

Sawamura stepped to the side only for Sugawara to grab the lapels of his jacket and dance with him, completely uninhibited with a care-free smile that Sawamura would never forget.

Right now, Sawamura wondered if they all looked like brothers.

 

* * *

 

On Christmas morning, Sawamura slowly woke, enjoying the ability to lie in bed and not have to worry about rushing to class.

He looked outside and saw it was snowing once again. The wind whipped, howling inside the room. The sound could have lulled him back to sleep if there was not a tiny voice in the back of his head saying, _it's Christmas_.

The entire tower stayed warm thanks to a few charms and many fires, but Sawamura still wrapped himself in a blanket before heading down to the common room. The handful of Gryffindors that were left were gathered around the fire opening presents that had been placed under the tree during the night. Sawamura joined them, sitting on the floor since all the sofas and chairs had been pushed over and were occupied.

The fire was crackling and hot chocolate sat forever warm at the table, extra marshmallows in a tiny dish to the side for those who wanted them. Michimiya was sitting next to the tree, calling out names on the presents and handing them out like an elf. 

Michimiya handed out gifts to the younger students before moving onto the older students, who were far more patient. Despite that patience, each of them still tore at the paper, partially for show and partially because they were secretly just as excited as the younger students.

“Sawamura,” Michimiya said, carefully handing him a gift. "This one's for you."

It was a circular container carefully wrapped in the _Daily Prophet_ from a few days ago. It wasn’t from Sugawara or his parents; Sugawara had delivered those gifts when he visited. It wasn’t from Kuroo or Bokuto either, since they gave each other their gifts in person.

He tore off the paper and stared at the tiny tin of broom polish. It was rather expensive, protecting against rain and scratches while making your broom look good as new. 

He looked up at Michimiya, who smiled, said, “Merry Christmas,” and then handed a first year a box, encouraging him to open it quickly so they could all see.

Sawamura smiled the rest of the morning.

 

* * *

 

Bokuto gave Sawamura the smoothest stone he had ever felt and explained how he had found it with great energy and detail ("There was this creek in the forest where I chased a rabbit and..."). Bokuto’s gifts were often things he found while flying around. This year, he gave Kuroo some type of plant he dug up out of the forest, which Bokuto was pretty sure was poisonous because “my hands were tingly and red for days.” The gifts were never expensive, but the stories were always interesting and Bokuto was always so _excited_ to give them their gifts. Sawamura was never disappointed.

Kuroo gave Sawamura a set of books on Transfiguration. Sawamura flipped through the pages, excited to see colored pictures demonstrating the effects of the spells. They were far more advanced than what they had learned in class and Sawamura was eager to try them in the coming weeks.

Kuroo and Bokuto both seemed to enjoy their gifts. Sawamura had gotten Bokuto a pair of new Quidditch goggles that could block the glare of a sun. He gave Kuroo a fancy quill that could change black ink into blue ink as well as a set of three empty leather notebooks. 

Several days after Christmas, they sat at the Hufflepuff table for breakfast. Bokuto was still in his pajamas, like half the students present, but Sawamura and Kuroo were dressed.

“Boys, the day has come,” Kuroo announced to them both. “Tomorrow, we can finally get rid of these leaves.”

Bokuto cheered happily while Sawamura let out a sigh of relief. He had long since forgotten the taste of the leaf, but he was always aware of it. He could feel it against his tongue and when he panted after Quidditch practice. It made brushing his teeth annoying, too.

Tomorrow, they would drink their shares and then begin casting the spell. They had to cast the spell each morning and night like clockwork until there was a lightning storm, where they would drink the last of the potion.

“I say we celebrate by brushing our teeth and eating peppermint imps to get rid of the taste,” Sawamura said.

“Seconded,” Kuroo said. “But tonight, we have another task.”

Bokuto and Kuroo grinned widely.

“We have to go up onto the roof again, don’t we?” Sawamura asked, groaning. Last time had been so stressful.

“At least there aren’t as many prefects,” Kuroo said with a shrug.

“And there’s no clouds again!” Bokuto said happily. “I’m really glad we didn’t have to do that crazy wind charm.”

Sawamura nodded in agreement. “It’s going to be cold, though.”

“I’ll bring blankets!” Bokuto said happily.

 

* * *

 

“I wish I had pop-corn,” Moaning Mrytle said as she watched Kuroo carefully split the potion into two cauldrons; they had just returned from the roof and were ready to add their leaves. “You’re going to be sick. You can borrow my stall if that happens, but only borrow it.”

Sawamura forced a smile. He didn’t want to think about sick. Thinking about being sick would make him actually sick.

The potion was more of a thick paste than a liquid and was a muddish, brown color. The reek had long since burned away his nose hairs so it hardly smelled anymore. It bubbled dangerously in the cauldrons even in the absence of a flame.

Worst of all, they couldn’t be sick. They each had to drink three liters of the fowl substance. Then, whenever the lightning storm came in weeks, or months, they had to consume another cup.

Once Kuroo was sure he had split the potion into two equal parts, he looked at Bokuto.

“Whenever you’re ready, Bo,” he said.

Bokuto nodded. He had cast a sticking charm to keep the leaves glued to the tops of their mouths so he had to be the one to reverse the charm.

Bokuto pointed his wand at Kuroo’s mouth, casting the spell, then did Sawamura’s.

Sawamura reached into his open mouth and carefully pried the leaf from his palate, shivering when the space was exposed and touched by his tongue. It felt so strange after all these weeks.

They dropped their leaves into the cauldrons and stirred them in, watching the leaves dissolve like the potion was acidic. Sawamura went pale.

Was this really a good idea?

Moaning Mrytle laughed.

“Aliquot out a cup,” Kuroo said, dipping in his ladle, which held that exact amount. He poured the viscous fluid into a large, spherical bottle with a cork.

Sawamura did the same, carefully setting his portion aside.

“I brought rubber spatulas to scrap the cauldron clean,” Sawamura said, reaching for his bag. “Suga said he uses them to get icing bowls clean so I think they’ll work for this… as long as they don’t melt.”

Kuroo exhaled then dipped his ladle into the cauldron. "Cheers, mate," he said.

Kuroo lifted his ladle out of his cauldron, pinched his nose shut, and then waited for gravity to pour the thick paste into his mouth. Sawamura didn’t want to watch his reaction, adverting his eyes. He didn't want to see Kuroo's reaction to the awful, thick potion. He already knew it was going to be terrible and did not want to think about it being any worse than he was expecting.

Even though he was not looking, he heard Kuroo gag and heard his cauldron slid against the tiled floor. Sawamura caved and looked over and saw Kuroo doubled in half, holding the ladle over his cauldron so it didn’t drip onto the floor. His face had gone stark white.

“Kuroo?” Bokuto asked, rushing over. He rubbed up and down Kuroo’s back.

Kuroo shook his head. He opened his mouth to speak, gagged, and then shut it. He slammed his fist against the ground and kept shaking his head until he forced himself to swallow.

“Merlin’s fucking _pants_ ,” Kuroo cursed. His arms were shaking. “It doesn’t want to be swallowed.”

“It’s that bad?” Bokuto asked with a deep frown.

“It’s the worst thing I’ve ever tasted and then worse,” Kuroo said miserably, “but I mean that literally. Some potions mess with your mind when you drink them. I don’t know what ingredient is doing it, but it doesn’t want to be drunk. You have to consciously force yourself swallow it.”

There was a beat of silence.

Kuroo looked over at Sawamura with a shit-eating grin and said, “Bet I can finish it before you.”

Sawamura took in a shaky breath then lifted his ladle to his mouth, determined.

(They finished at the same time, according to Bokuto, but Sawamura was adamant that he won.)

 

* * *

 

Sawamura woke up on New Year’s Eve to find a familiar calico cat sitting at the foot of his bed. There was a note tied around its center with the scratchy twine they sometimes used in Herbology to control their plants. Sawamura sat up, pulled the docile cat into his lap, and scratched under its chin.

Sawamura would recognize Kuroo’s cat anywhere. It had been a kitten in first year, but now was fully grown and had the tendency to roam the castle. It was quite famous for a cat. That still did not explain how the cat made it past the Fat Lady that guarded the entrance to Gryffindor Tower.

“How did you get in here, Kenma?”

Kenma meowed.

Sawamura undid the note as Kenma began to knead Sawamura’s calves.

 

_Sunset. Western courtyard. Be there, birthday boy._

_Love,  
Kuroo and Bokuto. _

Sawamura cast his daily animagus spell then dressed, wondering what the hell those two were planning.

He couldn’t wait to find out.

 

* * *

 

Apparently, Kuroo and Bokuto had more planned than whatever was happening at the western courtyard at sunset. At breakfast, Sawamura sat at the Gryffindor table across from Michimiya and began to fill a bowl with fruit. She gave him a sleepy smile, which he happily returned.

Halfway through breakfast, an owl arrived. The letter was bright yellow and sung “happy birthday” so loudly that it had to be a modified howler. Sawamura stared at the card as it hovered in midair. It finished its song, spat colorful confetti at him, and then shouted:

“You are all invited to celebrate Sawamura Daichi’s sixteenth birthday tonight at the western courtyard at sundown!”

The card spat more confetti then ripped into pieces. Kuroo and Bokuto could be heard snickering at the Hufflepuff table.

Michimiya gawked at Sawamura. “It’s your birthday,” she said, clueless. “That’s why Kuroo asked me to let his cat into the common room with that note.”

That explained Kenma, then.

Sawamura rubbed the back of his head. “Ah, yeah. I guess we never really talked all that much until this year so it never came up. Most people forget because it’s New Year’s Eve so I never mention it anyways.”

Michimiya slammed her hands on the table. “Forget your birthday? How dare they!” Sawamura laughed as she settled down, blushing madly. “I didn’t get you anything, but happy birthday, Sawamura. Any idea what they’re planning? Am I going to have to take house points on your birthday?”

“I may be giving them too much credit, but I think they’re smarter than to announce their meeting time if there was anything against the rules involved. So whatever is going to happen, I need to remember that it could have been worse. There could have been alcohol.”

“Do you guys get messed up when you drink?”

Sawamura thought back to Bokuto’s birthday, the only time he had had alcohol. He only remembered the sharp cinnamon of the fire whiskey and watching Bokuto and Kuroo strip as they ran into the great lake.

“It’s not pretty,” Sawamura said, smiling nonetheless. He looked at her in realization. The way she was phrasing things made it sound like _she_ had been drunk at some point. “Have you illegally had alcohol, prefect Michimiya Yui?”

She promptly put food in her mouth.

Sawamura laughed until she kicked him and told him to be quiet.

 

* * *

 

Sawamura wanted to spend the day doing nothing with Kuroo and Bokuto, or maybe going along with whatever mischief they had planned, but Kuroo and Bokuto were no where to be found so Sawamura spent the day with Michimiya entertaining the first years on grounds.

They spent the time before lunch playing hide and seek in the library, much to the librarian’s disapproval, and spent the time after lunch teaching them harmless charms, like the ones to make blue fire and another that cleaned up ink spills.

As the sun began to set, Sawamura and Michimiya and most of the other castle residents made their way outside to see what kind of disaster Kuroo and Bokuto had planned.

The air was cool and crisp with the distinct scent of incoming snow. There were hardly any clouds overhead so the storm was still some ways away, but the smell was there. Growing up in the countryside made him recognize the scent of incoming snow and rain. It was hard to explain to people who had never experience it themselves, who never paid attention to the way the air changed.

He wondered if Michimiya could smell it too.

Kuroo and Bokuto had set up several blankets on an open hill. There were already other students there by the time Sawamura and Michimiya arrived with their gang of younger students.

Sawamura sat in the front on a thick, heavy blanket near where Kuroo and Bokuto were fiddling with something. Michimiya sat down behind him, pressing the toes of her shoes against his back. He turned around and she smiled at him. He smiled back then turned around again.

“So what exactly are you two planning?” Sawamura asked. He put on a grin that put Kuroo’s to shame. “Should I be afraid?”

Kuroo answered, “We had wanted to do this at midnight, but there’s a curfew and we are _prefects._ Therefore, we must abide by the rules.” Kuroo smiled at the obvious lie. Sawamura rolled his eyes. Michimiya laughed behind him. “So we settled for now.”

“Can I do it?” Bokuto asked. He was practically bouncing. "It's dark enough, yeah?"

“Do it, Bo.”

Kuroo moved and sat down next to Sawamura, tugging his knees up to his chest and casting his eyes skyward. Sawamura watched Bokuto cast a fire charm, watched the traveling red spark move along several fuses, and then looked up. Bokuto ran over, sat on Sawamura’s other side, and leaned back on his hands as he looked up at the sky with large yellow eyes.

The crack of the first firework was expected, but it still made Sawamura’s heart jump. Cyan blue sparks curled and twisted from the core of the firework, charmed to move after explosion, creating a spiral in the sky.

The next was white, forming a star, but before it could disappear there was a crack of yellow, which formed a smaller star inside the first.

A red firework came out of the sky, the sparks flying towards them, landing in the grass but not touching any of them. Michimiya jumped behind him, her hands clutching at the back of his shirt as the sparks began to fall around them like shooting stars. They were not hot, fizzling away without doing any arm.

One twisted and formed a bird, another a fish, a third a fox. There was a red crow that caught his eye, followed by a white owl and green cat. They were bright and wonderful, and moved like they were alive.

"Did you make these?" Sawamura asked.

"Yeah," Kuroo said. "Bo did most of the charm work. He's scary good with fire charms."

"Is it awesome?" Bokuto asked as more fireworks cracked overhead. "I think it's awesome."

"Nothing's on fire," Sawamura said with a bit of a laugh. He could still feel Michimiya's fingers clutching the back of his robe and he wondered what expression should would be wearing if he turned around. He didn't though, looking at his friends instead. "It's awesome."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapters get a bit shorter from here on out. Besides the last chapter which is only a little over 1k, they're all decently long though (3-5k).
> 
> People that are part-veela don't exactly seem common in Harry Potter with Fleur and her family being the only mention in the entire series. I hate the idea that any "pretty" character must be part veela in HP AUs. To each their own, but I think this would be a rare occurrence, just like being a pure-blood would be (in HP canon, at least in the UK, there are very few remaining pure-blood families and I try to make as few canon characters pure-blood as possible to stay in line with this). Sugawara's the only character that's part veela in this series and honestly, I'm not even sure why I made him one when I wrote the first fic in the series. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time?


	6. Chapter 6

When the students returned to grounds, there was a large feast. Bokuto and Shirofuku filled their stomachs and took some to go, and returned to the Hufflepuff common room to do their homework together.

Every year, they pushed off their winter homework until the day before the new term, staying up later and later each year to complete the growing list of assignments. Their friends kept telling them to complete their assignments early, but they refused for the sake of tradition.

This year, they were up until three in the morning. Shirofuku fell asleep on the floor near his feet and Bokuto soon followed. Shimizu woke them up with enough time for breakfast before class, which they spent eating and finishing their Charms assignment and fighting off the urge to curl up and go back to sleep.

With everyone back and no illegal potion to tend to, Bokuto had more time than ever to focus on Quidditch. He rallied his team at practice, which made his captain sigh because that was her job, and then he bugged Kuroo and Akaashi afterwards for extended practice.

But Kuroo had extended practices with his team to prepare for their match against Ravenclaw, and Akaashi was slammed with number tables from Artihmancy, leaving Bokuto without a practice partner. 

So Bokuto spent his afternoon with Shirofuku in her room. She sat on her bed in front of him reading a magazine while he braided the back of her hair. He smelled her shampoo, honey lemon, and his stomach grumbled. He debated getting the sweets out of her nightstand, the ones she thought were a secret but he had known about since first year.

“It’s so boring without them,” Bokuto complained to Shirofuku. She hummed in acknowledgement. “I mean, this is nice, don’t get me wrong—“

“You’re fine, Kou. I know what you men."

Bokuto nodded. He focused on doing her hair right. It was a nice task, something that let his hands move and only needed half his attention. Plus his hands smelled good afterwards.

“I tried to ask Kozume ‘cause sometimes Kuroo can convince him to join us, but he just ran away from me. I think he hates me.”

“Kozume’s the shy one, right? He probably doesn’t hate you. Don’t take it personally.”

Bokuto frowned and tied off the braid. He fell onto his stomach, lying down next to her, his head near her knees.

She met his eyes.

“Kou, if I tell you a secret, will you swear to keep it?”

He turned onto his back and looked up at her. “Even from Kuroo and Sawamura?”

“They already know.”

He had no idea what kind of secret Shirofuku could have that Kuroo and Sawamura knew but he did not.

“Okay,” Bokuto said. The only people he would ever tell a secret to were Kuroo and Sawamura, and he wouldn’t tell something personal, something serious, something that was a real secret.

“You really can’t tell anyone. There’s about fifty people that will hex you if you do.” She closed her magazine and stuck out her hand, holding out her pinky. “Promise, Kou.”

Bokuto nodded seriously and linked their pinkies together, shaking on it.

“I’ve been wanting to tell you for awhile, but they wouldn’t let me,” Shirofuku said as she drew her hands into her lap. “Akaashi kind of spoiled it for you so they all decided it was okay if I told you everything.”

Something Akaashi told him?

Bokuto thought hard for a moment then remembered something Akaashi had said when they had first started practicing together back in October.

“Something about a Quidditch tournament,” Bokuto realized.

He had forgotten about it until now. He remembered bugging Akaashi, but Akaashi didn’t budge. Between class, practice, and the animagi potion, he had completely forgotten how curious he was about it.

“There’s a group of us that play Quidditch at night,” Shirofuku explained. “We call it the Midnight Quidditch Cup, or just the Midnight Cup. I play on a team with a bunch of my girl friends.”

Bokuto knew he should have been hurt that she didn’t trust him enough—though it sounded like she didn’t have the option, which was a whole new level of a weird—but he couldn’t find a single ounce of betrayal or hurt in his body.

Instead, he felt excitement.

“So you can fly?” Bokuto asked eagerly. Everyone learned to fly in first year, but not everyone could keep up with a player on the house team. “What do you play?”

“Seeker.”

Bokuto rolled onto his side, practically crawling into her lap. “Will you fly with me right now?”

She smiled slowly. “You’ll have to keep up; I’m fast.”

Bokuto all but ran down to the Pitch, his fingers wrapped around Shirofuku’s wrist, dragging her behind him. His strides were large, increasing to a dangerous speed as they went downhill. Shirofuku kept up, though, even helping him from falling when he came to a sudden stop at the broom shed.

It felt like he hadn’t been this excited in ages, like an entire new world had been opened to him. One of his best friends could join him in the sky. They could hover over the lake when the water was warm and dangle their feet in while they catch a peek at the giant squid. He wanted to take off right then and there, transform into an owl and catch the wind under his wings.  

He unlocked the door to the shed with a charm and hurried inside, grabbing his broom off the wall. Not every student kept their brooms in the shed, but most did. Since he had never seen a broom in her room, she had to keep hers here too. 

He watched her eagerly, curious about what kind of broom she had. It was the color of birch with dark twigs and white gold ringlets. It was a slender broom with little weight to it, perfect for a seeker that wanted to go fast.

Boktuo was bouncing with energy as they took off right outside of the shed.

 

* * *

 

Things changed after he learned about the Midnight Cup. Shirofuku and her friends suddenly started talking about matches with him. They invited him to cheer them on, some saying he could come as long as he brought Kuroo, which always made them giggle. He even learned about people that played Quidditch that he never knew about, like Hinata, a third year in his house that tried out for the house team every year and failed miserably.

It was as if an entire world had been opened to him.

When another snowstorm covered the grounds in a fresh blanket of snow, everyone went outside. Older students charmed massive, epic forts for snowball battles while others skated on the frozen over lake and built snowmen on the hills.

Bokuto found himself with his teammates squaring off against the Slytherin Quidditch team in a snowball fight to the death. Not the literal death. They decided they couldn’t throw jinxes, chunks of ice, or anything else that could actually hurt someone. The Slytherin team wasn't as slimy as some people though, they were certainly a slippery bunch.

The two teams charmed their snow different colors—Hufflepuff’s, of course, had to look like piss snow—and made their arsenals and bases. They had stacks of yellow snowballs in every corner of their icy fort and Bokuto could carry four at a time in one hand, leaving his other hand open to throw. 

“You’re going down, Bo!” Kuroo shouted from the side of the Slytherin fort, a perfectly square structure with towers for snipping.

“In our dreams!” Bokuto shouted back as he hide behind a shield made of ice, charmed up and held by Aone.

An alarm went off—a timed spell—and their prep time was over.

It was time for war.

Azumane and Aone covered Bokuto with large ice shields as he ran across the space between the two forts. Aone was taken out, then Azumane, but Bokuto was hidden behind a tree and Slytherins would have to leave their fort to hit him, or have a serious curve ball.

Better yet, the rest of Bokuto’s teammates took the chance to sneak around to the other side of the Slytherin fort. Their seeker charmed himself up into the air, up through the window of one of the Slytherin towers, and wrecked havoc on the snippers hiding there.

Soon, there was yellow and green everywhere and Bokuto didn’t know how many of his teammates were left. He looked to the sidelines and saw that most of both teams were out, leaving only Bokuto from Hufflepuff and Suzumeda and Kuroo from Slytherin.

Bokuto began to sneak to the Slytherin fort, spotting the two on the lower level through a window. He picked up one of the ice shields that had been dropped during their first sprint and used it to protect himself. 

He vaulted up through the window to make his attack.

Kuroo was facing the other way, but he was back to back with Suzumeda, who spotted him immediately and sent a flurry of snowballs at him.

Bokuto tossed up his ice shield, deflecting them, and lobbed a snowball over head. He hit Suzumeda on the top of the head. The young seeker cursed.

Kuroo whirled around, ready to throw, and saw that it was Bokuto.

“Last ones,” Bokuto said with a grin.

Kuroo returned his grin. “Let’s do this like men.”

Suzumeda shook the yellow snow off of her head and began to walk away. “Get ‘em, Kuroo,” she said.

Bokuto tossed his shield to the side, knowing that this may be a trap, but trusting Kuroo because he was, well, Kuroo.

They walked out into an open area, surrounded by their teammates. There were no forts to protect them, no shields, just two men and a few snowballs.

They circled each other slowly while their teams watched on, cheering on their teammates and jeering at the others.

Kuroo’s grin had disappeared as he studied the situation. Kuroo was always cunning, always thinking of some way to get past his opponents. It’s what made him a good dueler and an even better Quidditch player.

Bokuto had raw strength and speed on his side.

“Waiting for me to make the first move?” Bokuto asked.

“Never takes long to wait for you to show off,” Kuroo replied cheekily.

Bokuto felt his hand twitch around a snowball, ready to charge in and throw.

Then, without warning, snowballs dropped down from overhead.

Bokuto and Kuroo were covered in red snow. Confused, they looked at each other then up in the sky where the Gryffindor team was mounted on their brooms. Tanaka and Nishinoya were jeering with wicked smiles, like little elves. Sawamura and Michimiya high-fived.

“That doesn’t count!” Bokuto argued childishly.

“Seconded!” Kuroo said.

“Then let’s start over!” Michimiya shouted down, her voice playful. 

“If you’re up for it,” Kuroo challenged.

The great snowball fight ended with everyone frozen to the bone, covered in colored snow, and unsure who had really won. They set aside their house differences and made a trip to the kitchens for hot chocolate, warm butterbeer, and cinnamon bread fresh from the oven.

 

* * *

 

Bokuto met with Akaashi before heading down to the Pitch for their nighttime practice. Their practices were shorter since Ravenclaw had a match coming up and Akaashi could only practice so much before becoming tired, yet he always tried to spare a bit of energy for Bokuto, who was eternally grateful for something to do.

There were still a few, lingering hours of sun left and the two of them spent it in the sky, tossing a quaffle back and forth. Bokuto was trying out a new move where he corkscrewed around his opponents instead of flying next to them, almost like those muggle roller coasters he had seen, and Akaashi agreed to fly down the pitch for him.

Eventually, as the sun began to set, they put their feet back on the ground. Akaashi stretched out his arms and legs, but Bokuto tilted his head back and looked up at the sky.

“Ahhh!” Bokuto clutched at his hair and stared up at the amber sky with wide eyes. The sun was almost set.

That’s when the unexplainable urge to transform hit him. It was always like his body telling him to eat, only there was no pain in his stomach. It was a pleasant feeling, something warm and familiar like the fire of the common room was in his belly and blood. The gentle breeze against his human skin felt stronger than it actually was. He could already imagine pushing against it or riding with it with the wings he could practically feel itching under his skin.

“I want to fly,” Bokuto said wistfully.

“We were just flying, though. For quite a while.”

Bokuto moved his hands down to his sides and looked over at Akaashi, who looked confused.

Bokuto was friendly with a lot of people, but he didn’t consider that many his friends. Sawamura, Kuroo, Shirofuku—they were friends. Akaashi was his friend too.

It always felt so good to get it off his chest. He felt elated that he had another person who knew, who would understand, who he could confide in on rainy days when his second-half was getting the best of him. It was always terrifying saying it out loud that first time, but it felt better after.

And he had a feeling about this. He could trust Akaashi.

“I meant as an owl,” Bokuto said simply.

“What?”

“Kuroo calls it my ‘feathery little problem.’ My mom was a nature spirit so I can turn into an owl. It’s like being an animagi, but I was born with it and didn’t have to go through all that crap.”

Akaashi did not react for several moments.

Bokuto didn’t think his pause meant anything. Kuroo paused sometimes before speaking, when he wanted to be careful about what he said. Bokuto was almost never careful. He spoke on impulse, on a whim, and sometimes it backfired horribly.

He had no idea this would be one of those horrible moments until Akaashi asked, “So you’re not human?”

Akaashi asked it so bluntly, so simply, like that was the only and obvious conclusion. And it was. It was the most obvious thing.

It was the thing Bokuto hated the most.

More than human, that’s what Sugawara had said, but that really was wishful thinking, wasn’t it? More than human. Who was he kidding?

He was not human.

He was a monster.

He had _always_ been a monster.

“I—“ Bokuto felt his heart in his stomach and his stomach in his feet. “I’ve got to go.”

Bokuto turned and ran, sprinting, and then transformed.

He didn’t look back.

 

* * *

 

The only people at Hogwarts who knew were Kuroo, Sawamura, and Shirofuku. Kuroo had been amazed by Bokuto’s ability when he first found out and had eagerly asked to see Bokuto transform. Shirofuku had simply rested her head on his shoulder and let him talk about it, never saying anything either way, but Bokuto knew she didn’t think it was weird.

When Sawamura found out, it had been during a sticky situation. For weeks, Bokuto thought Sawamura was disgusted with him for being a half-breed. Those had been some of the worst weeks of his life. He hardly slept, hardly ate, and felt like he was going through the motions. Sawamura had been one of his first real friends and, at the time, Bokuto believed Sawamura thought he was a monster.

(Sawamura never thought that, though. Sawamura never cared. Bokuto believed that now.)

Akaashi, though…

Bokuto felt worse than he had all those years ago when he Sawamura figured it out accidently. This time, he consciously made the choice to tell Akaashi, someone he had only known for a few months, and it was his fault. He made an idiotic decision of epic proportions and he ruined a friendship—possibly more than that.

Akaashi didn’t seem like the type to tell people, but if he was grossed out enough, he just might. If people found out, Bokuto didn’t know what they would do.

His mother’s kind was hunted to near extinction, their forms stuffed and displayed in museums and homes of the rich, their feathers sold as luxuries.

Maybe he’d be reported to the Ministry. Would he even be allowed to continue school? He wasn’t fully a wizard; they could probably expel him. If it made the news, poachers may come after him like they did the other nature spirits.

He really fucked up and he had no one else to blame but himself.

So Bokuto flew off, away from the Pitch, not caring where he was going but knowing he needed to get away. He hardly heard Akaashi yell after him once, twice, before going quiet, or maybe Bokuto was just too far away.

He knew the forests on grounds well enough to know where the forbidden forest was. And contrary to popular belief, he wasn’t dumb enough to fly into that even if he was upset.

He flew somewhere safe, somewhere he could hide and calm down. He flew into a tall pine tree deep in the forest and nestled into its inner branches. It was warm there, the heat trapped by the needles. There was a fox sleeping at the trunk of the tree that glanced up at him, growled, and then lowered its head.

Animals could always tell he didn’t quite belong. Just like humans.

Bokuto resigned himself to spending the night in the tree. It wouldn’t have been the first time. Sometimes, when he got truly upset, he didn’t like to be trapped by walls. He felt safer with space around him, with the sky to fly in.

As he settled in, he used his beak to pick at one of his feathers that was bothering him—it had gotten snagged when he made it into the crowded tree. After the feather no longer felt like it was poking him, he drifted into sleep.

 

* * *

 

“Bo!”

When Bokuto awoke with a start, the fox at the bottom of the tree was gone. Bokuto wiggled his wings and talons and turned his head so the ruffles of his feathers could catch and amplify the sound.

“Bo!” the voice called out again.

It was Kuroo. No one else called him that.

“Bokuto!”

Sawamura too?

Still half-asleep, Bokuto managed to make it back out of the tree and followed the sound of their voices, easily gliding between the tall trees despite the darkness. It was night now, the sun long since set, judging by the temperature.

He was silent when he flew and none of them saw him approach, the light of their wands pointed at the ground so they did not trip instead of pointing them up a the trees where Bokuto was seated.

There were three lights, not two. Bokuto thought for a moment it may be Shirofuku, but it was not.

Akaashi was with Kuroo and Sawamura, his expression unlike any Bokuto had ever seen on the boy.

Bokuto flew silently to another tree branch, closer to them. He set down on a low branch and watched Sawamura, Kuroo, and Akaashi walking through the dark forest.

“Bokuto!” Sawamura called out again. His eyes were wide and his breath was heavy. Bokuto could hear it.

Panic. Concern. The emotions radiated off of Sawamura. That’s what Bokuto’s animal instincts told him.

Sawamura looked at Akaashi. “You’re _sure_ you saw him fly in this direction?”

“Positive,” Akaashi confirmed.

“It’s your fault he’s out here anyways,” Kuroo grumbled.

“Kuroo,” Sawamura said cautiously. “Not now.”

“Sawamura’s right,” Akaashi said. “You can scream all you want after we find him.”

Kuroo turned on Akaashi and shoved him up against a thick tree and pointed his wand under his chin, jamming it up against his skin. The light from the tip of his wand disappeared, making the area significantly darker.

“We wouldn’t have to find him if it wasn’t for you.”

Sawamura grabbed Kuroo’s arm, tugging, but Kuroo jerked him away.

Concern. Anger. Anger. _Anger._

“If we don’t find him, I swear—“

“Kuroo, now isn’t the time—“

“What exactly did you say to him?” Kuroo shouted, voice rough. He pushed Akaashi harder against the tree, forcing Akaashi up to the tips of his toes. “You said he got upset, turned into an owl, and flew away. So you _know._ People think he’s an idiot but he’s not. He wouldn’t transform in front of you unless he told you. Did he tell you tonight? What the hell did you say to him?”

Sawamura stood nearby, waiting for Akaashi to answer and watching Kuroo to make sure he didn’t step even further out of line.

“I asked if he wasn’t human,” Akaashi said, voice tight. “Which, in retrospect, was not the best wording. I was confused because I didn’t understand. I didn’t mean—I didn’t mean it like that.”

Kuroo clamped his teeth together and exhaled through them.

“Kuroo,” Sawamura said again, “that’s enough. This isn’t helping find Bokuto. Akaashi and Bokuto can duke it out, or talk about it, or whatever they want to do once we find him and make sure he’s safe. That’s all I care about right now.”

Kuroo backed away slowly, lowering his wand. “I’m not forgiving you.”

“You shouldn’t,” Akaashi said. “But in my defense, I was not expecting Bokuto to tell me he could turn into an owl tonight.”

Akaashi exhaled and brought a hand up to his face to rub at his eyes.

“You were right," Akaashi said, a bit of a sigh. "This is my fault.”

Fear. Fear dripping like water off of Akaashi.

But at what? Of Bokuto?

No, it wasn’t as intense, not as primal. It felt closer to concern. Fear that Bokuto was gone? Fear that Akaashi had ruined their friendship? Bokuto couldn’t tell. Instincts, unfortunately, only told him the raw emotion and not the complicated thoughts behind it.

Kuroo and Sawamura said nothing, not bothering to correct Akaashi. But it wasn’t Akaashi’s fault. Emotions were complicated and Bokuto reacted before Akaashi could explain his.

Bokuto felt his heart racing. It was both their fault.

He swooped down from the trees, transforming when he was near the ground, and hung his human head low to avoid their gazes.

Kuroo ran forward and hugged him hard. Bokuto hugged him back.

“I’ll hex him if you want,” Kuroo said, quiet so only Bokuto could hear.

“Do you mean that?” Bokuto asked.

Kuroo hadn’t hexed or jinxed anyone since first year. Even in Dueling Club, Kuroo only used defensive spells. He took failing marks in Defense Against the Dark Arts because he refused to practice offensive spells, though Bokuto had no doubt that someone as clever as Kuroo retained that information and could cast those spells if he ever wanted to.

“For you? Probably.”

Bokuto pulled back and shook his head. “No. Don’t do that. Don’t hate him, either.”

Kuroo frowned.

“I mean it,” Bokuto said sternly.

Kuroo hesitated then nodded. He turned and looked at Akaashi, glaring most likely, and then stepped to the side.

“Bokuto, I didn’t—“ Akaashi began, but Bokuto put up a hand and Akaashi stopped.

“Do you care?” Boktuo asked. He felt raw and exposed.

“No,” Akaashi answered, no hesitation. “I don’t understand completely, but I don’t care. And I won’t tell anyone. I'm just confused.”

“It’s not something a lot of people know,” Bokuto said, meeting Akaashi’s eyes. “It’s personal.”

“I understand that,” Akaashi said. He quickly looked at Sawamura and Kuroo. “I figured they knew and could help find you. I wanted to make sure you were okay. I don’t know how high up owls are on the food chain.”

Bokuto grinned. “We’re actually pretty high up there. Not much in these forests can hurt me when I’m flying. Owls are a lot more badass than people think.”

“Now he’s cocky,” Kuroo said, rolling his eyes. “Great. Way to go, Akaashi.”

Akaashi smiled softly then looked at Kuroo and Sawamura, more so Kuroo. His smile was gone.

“Can you two forgive me for this?” Akaashi asked. “Or do I need to ask Kozume about how to get in your good graces again?”

Sawamura looked at Bokuto, studied his face for a moment, and then looked at Akaashi and said, “We’re good.”

“Speak for yourself,” Kuroo said. He walked over to Akaashi, put an arm around his shoulders, and harshly tugged the shorter boy closer. “Let’s just call this a warning. You hurt my friends again and—“

“Kuroo,” Sawamura cut in.

Kuroo sighed. He loosened his pull on Akaashi, but kept his arm around his shoulders. “Fine. Ten points from Ravenclaw for being an inconsiderate friend.”

Bokuto wondered how Kuroo could do that and then remembered he was a prefect, who had the ability to take house points like that.

With a faint smile, Akaashi said, “Fair enough,” and all was well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I was first planning out the major events of the fic, I didn't plan for Akaashi to find out about Bokuto. Instead, I had wanted Bokuto's mother to visit Hogwarts, but I decided against it. It just didn't fit well in the fic and Bokuto's budding friendship with Akaashi was something I wanted to write more about especially since they seem pretty closer in With Fangs Bared.


	7. Chapter 7

Sometimes, Kuroo dreamed of last summer, when they were all at Kuroo’s house and Sugawara convinced them to skinny dip in the lake. He still remembered Sugawara stripping naked, remembered the way he stared at Sugawara’s toned body and his confident posture, remembered how even Sawamura had joined in with enough persuading.

More often than not, he dreamt of Daishou and his long fingers, his smile after he won a duel, the way his hands smelled of potions and soil from the greenhouse. He dreamt of the cologne Mika gave him for Christmas and the cheap vodka he drank at house parties.

When he woke, he felt shame. Not at the gender, but at their familiar faces. He shouldn’t dream of his friends. Except for Daishou, who was not his friend in the same way Sawamura and Bokuto, or even Sugawara, were. Daishou had not been a friend like those three for a long time.

Kuroo didn’t care that he was gay, but he knew that other people might and that scared him more than he would ever admit.

He felt like he was lying when he derailed conversations started up by Bokuto about how pretty girls were, when he avoided answering a question with a shrug and a smirk, coming up with a lie like he didn’t kiss and tell. He had never even kissed anyone to tell about.

It wasn’t until he had liquid courage in the worst form, cheap vodka curtsy of Daishou, that he even had the courage to tell anyone. Cheap liquor made the worst ideas seem good, especially when he was on Daishou’s bed eating licorice while Daishou drunkenly recited the scientific names of his favorite plants.

The party was still going strong out in the common room. Even the best of them would be hungover in class come tomorrow morning. Kuroo had Charms first period. He would look at Sawamura and Bokuto’s notes.

But that was tomorrow.

Tonight, he was lying down, head on Daishou’s pillow, Daishou’s shoulder against his in the most innocent of ways. Just a touch, nothing more. Nothing more because Daishou was dating Mika. Because, as far as Kuroo knew, Daishou did not look at boys the way Kuroo did.

Kuroo hated himself for setting up Daishou and Mika. He hated that he cared. He hated that he was too much of a coward to say how he felt.

He tilted his head and watched Daishou talk, hands animated in the air, counting off incorrectly on his fingers. His fingers were long and bony, the knuckles protruding, veins slightly defined when he rolled them into fists, or grasped his wand hard during a duel. Kuroo was certain he had memorized Daishou’s hands.

Daishou had on such a serious expression, a subtle tightness in his clean-shaven jaw as he tried to remember the last of the plants in the greenhouse he cared for. He stopped suddenly, turned his head, and grinned at Kuroo.

“What?” Daishou asked, catching him staring. 

Kuroo’s eyes flicked down to Daishou’s lips then back up to his nose, unable to meet his eyes. Daishou was too intoxicated to notice such a small gesture that would usually tell him so much.

Kuroo never spent much time looking at Daishou’s eyes. Daishou’s eyes spelled trouble and danger. His eyes were always looking for something to exploit or manipulate, and they looked down on people—on the lazy and unambitious, the ones who used excuses. Sometimes, though, he looked at Kuroo with a fondness that made Kuroo swallow thickly.

Now, Kuroo didn’t know what his eyes looked like. He was sure he would lose his what courage the liquor was giving him if he looked up just a few more inches.

“I’ll hex you if you tell anyone,” Kuroo threatened.

Daisou grin grew wider. “You could try, but I don’t think you could.”

“I’m serious. You can hate me, you can never talk to me again, but you cannot tell anyone.”

Daishou’s grin disappeared. Kuroo never talked about hexing people. He only used defensive spells, ever since he hexed that bastard’s tongue in first year when he called Daishou a mud-blood. So it was probably strange to Daishou that Kuroo was serious.

But despite his serious tone, Kuroo didn’t think he could actually hex Daishou, just like he doubted he would have hexed Akaashi in that forest last month.

“I like boys,” Kuroo admitted, forcing his voice steady. He rolled onto his side, one arm trapped beneath him, the other bent, his fingers digging into the little space of pillow between their heads that he had wanted to close since late fourth year. “And I’m scared to tell people because they’ll probably hate me.”

Daishou licked his lips. He thought for a second. The moment seemed to draw on forever.

“What about Kozume?” Daishou asked finally. “Does he know?”

Kuroo turned his face into the pillow.

He was scared of what Kenma thought the most. Kenma, who he shared a bed with when they slept at each other’s house, even now that they were older. Kenma, who he changed in front of. Kenma, who he touched and clung to, and loved like a brother.

He didn’t want Kenma to think about those times and mistake them for something they weren’t. Sometimes, Kuroo dreamt of Sawamura, of Bokuto, of Sugawara, and of Daishou. But he never once thought of Kenma that way. He never once thought of Kenma was more than a friend.

Kuroo said nothing.

Daishou exhaled. “I don’t hate you. So this isn’t going so badly. You did threaten to hex me, so maybe leave that out when you talk to others.”

Kuroo lifted his head form the pillow and looked at Daishou, who was smirking. Kuroo wanted to reach over and cup his face, pull him close, kiss him, taste the shit vodka on his lips. He wanted to know why Bokuto was so obsessed with kissing someone.

He kept his hand fisted in the pillow between their heads, refusing to move it.

“Your friends are too damn nice to be pricks to you about it,” Daishou said, annoyed, like that was a problem. “And if they are, I’ll hex them. I swear I will. You _know_ I will, Tetsurou.”

Kuroo knew and it made his stomach uneasy. How could he like Daishou when he said things like this? He pretended Daishou was only kidding, the way Kuroo had only been kidding moments ago.

“They won’t hate you,” Daishou said. “No one that cares about you will hate you.”

“So,” Kuroo said, licking his lips, “plants.”

Daishou turned his head, looking at the ceiling again, but Kuroo kept staring at him.

 

* * *

 

For all the things that were bad about Daishou, he also knew when to avoid a subject. With most people, he kept quiet so he could use that information at a later date. However, with Kuroo and the few others lucky enough to be considered Daishou’s friends, Daishou did it out of a kindness, or at least Kuroo liked to think that way. Maybe Daishou just couldn’t be bothered, or maybe he felt too awkward actually having conversations about emotions that were not twisted in some way, shape, or form.

Kuroo didn’t even have much time to think about it. They were just months away from OWLs and Kuroo was already planning addition study sessions on weekends. He had planned to study diligently every day, but in the fall, the animagi potion took priority. His grades had suffered slightly as a result, but as long as his OWL scores were good, his term grades didn’t matter much in the end.

So he woke up, recited the animagus spell, and went about his day as best he could, making up for lost time with countless hours in the library, and cast the spell again before heading to sleep. Day after day he did the same thing, with the occasional Quidditch practice and prefect rounds.

Kuroo was in his favorite corner of the library with Bokuto and Sawamura, a pile of jelly slugs in the middle of the table for whoever could find the source they needed for their History of Magic assay, when the person he wanted to see the least approached.

“Hey.”

Kuroo kept his face blank when he lifted his eyes to look at the head boy.

The more secrets Kuroo learned from Arashi—him having no qualms about stealing from their potions master, his involvement with the Midnight Quidditch Cup—the more of a threat he became in Kuroo’s eyes. Arashi was a Ravenclaw but he was as sly as a Slytherin.

It didn’t slip Kuroo’s mind that Arashi probably knew a book had been stolen from the restricted section. By now, months had passed, and surely the librarian had noticed. She surely told the professors and the head boy and girl.

Arashi was a danger to their plan. Even though they had finished the potion, if Kuroo, Sawamura, or Bokuto slipped up and Arashi found out, it could ruin everything.

“Hey,” Sawamura said back happily while Kuroo greeted him with a short nod.

Arashi looked between Sawamura and Kuroo and asked, “Can either of you go on rounds with me tonight? Our lovely head girl got hit by a nasty spell in Defense Against the Dark Arts so I’m out a partner. And for the record, this isn’t the favor you owe me for helping with that potion.”

Arashi grinned wickedly, looking rather smug that he hadn’t forgotten about that. Kuroo certainly had not forgotten.

“I’m flying with Michimiya; we’re working on flight patterns together,” Sawamura said, glancing at Kuroo. “But I can cancel if you have something more important. She won’t mind.”

Kuroo didn’t have anything more important but he didn’t want to be with Arashi with so much on the line. Yet even though he trusted Sawamura to keep their secrets, he trusted Arashi less and himself more, and didn’t want the Arashi and Sawamura alone where he could not step in or be in control.

Kuroo shrugged and easily said, “I can do it. Great Hall at eleven?”

“Great Hall at eleven,” Arashi agreed and walked away.

“Ah-ha!” Bokuto shouted, shushed by several students nearby. “Found the source.” He slid a book to the center of the table and stole the jelly slugs.

Sawamura eyed Kuroo, who said, “I know.”

“You didn’t know what I was going to say,” Sawamura said, frowning.

Kuroo raised an eyebrow. “Probably something about being careful, yeah?”

Bokuto slapped his hands onto the table and chewed the jelly slugs in his mouth quickly. Kuroo hoped he didn’t choke.

When he was finished chewing, he said, “I don’t like that guy. I get weird vibes from him sometimes, like he doesn’t mean what he’s saying.”

Kuroo tapped his quill against his essay. “It’ll be fine. It’s just rounds.”

Sawamura hesitated then nodded, seeming to trust Kuroo. He leaned over to Bokuto and asked, “So what’s the reference we need to cite?”

 

* * *

 

Kuroo arrived at the Great Hall several minutes early. Usually he walked up from the dungeons with Aihara, his usual rounds partner, and they talked to the portraits before their rounds officially began. Since learning she played on a secret Quidditch team, they had far more to talk about than class and how many points they were going to take that night.

Kuroo would give anything to be on rounds with her instead of with Arashi.

Arashi arrived right on time, waving. Kuroo slid his hands into his pockets and approached him before they headed down a corridor to begin.

As Kuroo suspected, Arashi did most of the talking and only asked about frivolous things, like how Quidditch practice was and how his winter break had been. Kuroo had been on rounds with the head boy before and they never talked about anything deep, mostly where students hid when they were in trouble and which portraits would scream if you woke them up.

Yet Kuroo was not surprised when out of the blue, Arashi said, “I’m going to call in that favor.”

Kuroo’s hands flexed in his pockets but he kept his posture and face relaxed. He glanced down at Arashi, who was looking straight ahead.

“Tell me how you and Kozume know each other. You’re childhood friends, but you’re a pure-blood and he’s a muggle-born. How does that work?”

That was not exactly what Kuroo was expecting.

“This is the only thing you want?” Kuroo asked cautiously. “No fine print?”

“Nope,” Arashi confirmed, popping the sound like a bubble.

It was a harmless question compared to what Arashi could have asked. “Oh, hey, are you and your friends secretly becoming animagi, which is breaking the law and could land you in Azkaban?”

He didn’t mind talking about his family, not really, and he wouldn’t have to lie.

Kuroo nodded once and looked ahead. “Well, I guess I should tell you that you’re wrong.”

Arashi frowned. “You’re _not_ childhood friends?”

“I’m not a pure-blood,” Kuroo corrected coldly. He hated being associated with that term, with those people. “My dad, on the other hand, is and he comes from the worst kind of family. I think my aunt’s first word was ‘mud-blood.’ Actually, I think _all_ my aunts’ first words were ‘mud-blood.’

“My dad was the youngest. His older sisters were just as horrible as my grandparents. They called people blood traitors, talked badly about muggle-borns, and thought any intelligent magical creature like a house elf or centaur was a wild animal. But my dad, for some reason, didn’t think like them.

“His favorite way of rebelling during his teenage years was to apparate to the middle of muggle London. He liked to walk around and go tea shops and diners. There was one diner he really liked, the one where my mom worked after school. Boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy makes an idiot of himself until said girl falls in love with him…”

Arashi laughed.

“My mom had this friend, another muggle girl, who she told everything. So when my mom fell in love with a wizard, her friend knew. Fast-forward a couple of years and I was born, then my mom’s friend had a baby, a baby that could do strange things like her best friend’s husband.”

“ _Ah_ ,” Arashi said in realization. “A muggle-born. Kozume.”

Kuroo nodded. “We were raised like brothers.”

“So did you grandparents disown your dad for marrying a muggle woman?”

“You asked your one question.”

Arashi nodded stiffly, like he had been hoping for more. “Fair enough.”

Kuroo waited a moment then answered anyways, “They did, at first. But my grandmother’s body couldn’t handle another child at her age, and my four aunts married pure-blood men and took their family names. Our family’s bloodline could be passed down through my aunts’ children, but not our name, which to pure-bloods is the same thing as never passing down your blood at all. If your name does not continue, there’s no point in having children.”

“That’s…” Arashi rubbed the back of his head, clearly at a loss for words. “Really messed up.”

“When my dad had a child, a male child that could potentially pass on the family name, they over looked the fact that I’m a half-blood. They keep telling me to erase the shame my father brought on us and to disregard that part of me, to marry some pure-blood girl and act like my parents were never in love.”

“Bet that went over well,” Arashi said sarcastically.

“Let’s just say family gatherings are not fun. They try to bribe me with the best gifts, though.”

“I bet.” Arashi looked over at him. “Hey, thanks for telling me all of that. You really didn’t have to.”

Kuroo shrugged. “I owed you. I don’t like owing people. And now I don’t owe you anything.”

“Simple enough.” Arashi stretched his arms up above his head then bent them at the elbow, his palms resting on the back of his head and elbows sticking out. “I wasn’t expecting you to be like this. I’ve heard a lot of things about you over the years and I just assumed you were this pure-blood, hex-casting troublemaker with good grades and dangerously good looks. I’m glad I was wrong.”

Kuroo arched an eyebrow. “Even about my dangerously good looks?”

Arashi shrugged. “Girls talk about you a lot.”

“I never heard anything about you before you became head boy,” Kuroo said.

“Aw, man. Kozume didn’t even mention that I helped him with his electronics? That’s harsh.”

Kuroo couldn’t help it, he laughed.

 

* * *

 

Sawamura and Bokuto were curious about how it went with Arashi and he assured them they no longer owed the head boy anything. Sawamura let out a sigh of relief while Bokuto asked what he had to do.

“Did you have to kill someone and hide the body?”

“He just wanted to know about me. Well, Kenma and me.”

Sawamura pushed his eyebrows together. “That’s weird.”

“Yeah,” Bokuto agreed.

Kuroo nodded in agreement. He usually didn’t like people talking about Kenma. Not because he had some sick possessive streak—Kenma could certainly take care of himself—but he knew Kenma didn’t like the attention and would never say anything himself. He preferred being a side character, not the main character.

He didn’t actually tell Arashi that much about Kenma, though, so he didn’t feel bad about it.

“I think he’ll leave us alone now, at least,” Kuroo said.

“As much as the head boy can leave prefects alone,” Sawamura said.

And it really did seem to be the end of it. Arashi smiled and waved in the corridors like usual, but he didn’t ask anything else, didn’t pry any further. Kuroo was thankful.

 

* * *

 

Slytherin had a match against Ravenclaw in the coming weeks and Kuroo’s captain was hell bent on working them to death. That meant double practices and even morning practices before the sun had fully risen.

Kuroo and his teammates slithered their way out of the dungeons to the Pitch, dragging their feet and yawning into their hands. Kuroo would have to ask Daishou to make him some invigoration draught if these practices kept up.

“So sleepy,” Suzumeda said, her head lolling to the side like she would find a pillow on her shoulder to continue sleeping on.

Kuroo set her head straight with a chortle.

Suzumeda was quickly becoming closer to Kuroo than any other teammate, even the ones he was on the team with last year. While he was friendly and on good terms with all of his teammates, he got along best with the young seeker, who could read people well and grinned at his sly remarks.

She was not quite his protégé—she played a different position that required a completely different skill set—but he certainly did take her under his wing, or scales.

Being on the Slytherin house team meant that every time a matched approached, approximately three quarters of the school hated your guts and jeered at you when you came into the Great Hall after practice.

Suzumeda’s scales were still weak, her confidence lacking, and Kuroo would not let those hostilities break her. She was too valuable for the team and she did not deserve such treatment.

After morning practice, they showered in the locker rooms beneath the Pitch then made their way to breakfast at the Great Hall.

“What do you think of Kenma?” Kuroo asked curiously.

“You mean Ravenclaw’s seeker?” Suzumeda asked. Kuroo nodded. Suzumeda shrugged indifferently. “I’ve only seen him play once in that match against Hufflepuff. He caught the snitch and Ravenclaw won, but I think their chasers had a lot to do with that, too. They handled Bokuto well.”

Akaashi had played Bokuto like a fiddle, yet Bokuto hadn’t been bummed about it for long. It was probably because the two started to practice together.

“I don’t know what to think of him,” Suzumeda said honestly. “What’s your take on him? You’re friends with him.”

“He’s really good at watching people and he thinks things through before doing them. If he sees you near the snitch and you haven’t spotted it yet, he’ll probably trick you with a feint.”

Suzumeda nodded, listening intently.

“But knowing Kenma, who only puts in the minimal effort, he won’t pull a feint unless you’re really close to the snitch. Even then, he may not bother. He does the bare minimum. Sometimes I wonder if he even likes Quidditch.”

“Why would he play if he didn’t like it?”

Kuroo shrugged. “I forced him to when we were young. At the same time, I don’t think he’d do something he hates for this long, let alone join the house team. I don’t know if he likes Quidditch, but I know he hates to lose even more.

“He’s only seen you play in one match too and he’s not the type to spy during practice. He’ll have to figure out which of your dives are feints and which are real if he wants to win.”

Suzumeda nodded again. The captain appeared to be listening but did not interject, keeping a close eye on their conversation.

“I’ll keep the bludgers out of your way and clear you a path,” Kuroo said with a purposefully cocky grin.

“Hey!” the other beater said, a sixth year girl. “What am I, chopped liver?”

Kuroo laughed. “We’ll _all_ clear a path for you.”

Suzumeda smiled. He meant it and it seemed like she believed him.

“Poison and the final blow, right?” she asked, recalling what he had told her before their first match, when she had been nervous.

“That’s the only way for snakes to win a match,” Kuroo said, smiling.

 

* * *

 

Kuroo entered the prefects’ bath and spotted the mermaid lounging against her rock, sorting various shells that rested in a small divot there. Since the accidental flood last term, he had visited the bath several times and was beginning to work through each knob, trying a new one or two every time.

The mermaid waved at him as he entered. He started his bath and then began to strip.

“Hello, Tetsurou, long time no see.” She rested her hands on her rock and leaned forward like she was gazing at him. She wasn't. She was only seventeen herself, but she never looked at students directly when they were undressing, at least not their bodies. 

Kuroo laughed. “It’s been two nights, Anthemoessa.”

“It’s always good to see you. No one talks to me like you do. They think I’m nothing more than a flirt.”

Kuroo waited for the water to fill two thirds of the tub before getting completely naked and slipping into the golden bathtub. Once the water was near the lip of the tub, he turned it off. It smelled like apples and cinnamon, not unpleasant, perhaps his best scent yet, and the water was perfectly warm.

“Want me to sing you a song like last time?” the mermaid asked.

The acoustics in the bathroom were amazing. Her voice was idyllic, ringing clearly and echoing against the marble. He could fall asleep listening to her sing.

“Not today,” he said as he swam up to the edge of the rest, hanging over the lip to look at the mermaid. “I wanted your opinion on something. It’s about love.”

“Do tell. Is there a special boy on your mind?”

Kuroo blinked dumbly. “Why do you say boy instead of girl?”

The mermaid smiled coyly. “You could say that sirens have a knack for romance.”

Siren?

“You sang to me!” Kuroo said, slightly horrified.

The mermaid—siren, he supposed—waved her hand. “I’m in a portrait. There’s little I could do to you from here. Besides, I’m not a true siren. True sirens from Greece have the bodies of birds. I’m what some lonely sailor dreamt up and painted on glass.” She tilted her head and smiled. “You will keep my secret, won’t you? I’m quite fond of being a mermaid instead of a siren.”

She flapped her tail and puffed out her pink bottom lip.

“Sure. Our secret.” Kuroo smiled. He sunk a little lower into the hot water, exhaling.

“Is there someone?” she asked, curious.

“No.” He thought of Daishou. “Yes.” He didn’t mean that when he first brought it up. “I didn’t want to talk about that. I just… I don’t know how to tell people I fancy boys.”

“Have you told anyone at all?”

“One person, but not the people closest to me.”

The mermaid tapped her plush bottom lip. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you what to do. I don’t know your friends the way you do. Do you think they would react badly? People are very progressive nowadays.”

“I think they’d be okay with it, but I don’t know for sure…”

“And you’re afraid. You’re afraid because your friends are important to you and you don’t know what you would do if they looked at you differently.”

It was the truth.

Kuroo pushed back away from the edge of the tub and floated to the center.

“Anthemoessa, can you sing me that song now?”

 

* * *

 

When Sawamura was at Quidditch practice, Kuroo and Bokuto got up to no good. After tossing back ideas on what to do—Transfiguration practice, Herbology homework, Exploding Snap, bugging Akaashi and Kenma to practice—they decided on taking their brooms and flying around the lake.

The grounds looked so different from up here. The trees in the forests were rows of wooden sticks without their leaves, the occasional pine tree a pleasant speck of color in the monochrome landscape. He wondered if he would be a bird and could fly with Bokuto, if the world would look any different.

They flew lazily over the lake, gradually picking up speed, until they were racing at top speed, the winter air tightening the skin of his face. His lips went dry and his hands reddened around his broomstick, but it was all so very exciting and dangerous that he didn’t care at all.

Bokuto dived but Kuroo did not fly after him, not letting himself get baited. Bokuto shouted recklessly as he let his feet skim over top of the water, creating a spray of cold mist, before coming out of his dive.

“Okay, that was really cold!” Bokuto shouted over his shoulder. 

Kuroo laughed. Of course the water was freezing. There was little snow left on the ground, but it was still winter and it would be months before the water warmed. The second it did, girls would put on their swimsuits and boys would strip to their underwear, wading into the lakeside.

Feeling devious, Kuroo waved his wand and charmed a ball of water the size of a snowball from the lake and sent it flying at Bokuto’s back. Bokuto yelped and cursed, and then took a sharp turn to fly straight at Kuroo.

Kuroo leaned into his broom, prepared for the game of chicken. They would move out of the way at the last second, like they always did.

But of course Bokuto could not be predicted. He accelerated without warning, without thinking, leaving Kuroo no time to move out of the way.

Shit, Kuroo thought the second before the impact.

They crashed painfully into each other, falling off their brooms as they plummeted into the frigid water of the lake. Bokuto shouted, “Kur—“ before breaking the surface and disappearing.

The impact with the tense water surface hurt nearly as much as Bokuto ramming into him.

The cold enveloped Kuroo and it was all he could think of. Completely submerged in the freezing water, his body felt smaller, tighter. The air left his lungs and muddy water flooded his mouth, a milder taste than that of the earthy mandrake leaf.

He couldn’t tell which way was up or down, his brain shutting down until the only thing he could think of was cold, cold, _cold_.  

He felt Bokuto kicking up to the surface near him—Bokuto’s foot hit his ribs with startling precision. Kuroo followed him up to the surface.

“Bloody hell!” Bokuto cursed. His teeth were chattering together and his hair was matted to his face, exposing all of the dark roots at the top of his head. He paddled to stay afloat. “Even my balls are fucking frozen. How long does it take to get hypothermia?”

Kuroo gasped for air, struggling to stay afloat, his body heavy like an anchor. “I don’t want to find out. Shit, where’re our brooms?”

Kuroo looked around for his broom, which floated several feet away, and swam over as quickly as he could with muscles that did not want to respond. He wondered if you could mount and take off from underwater.

One way to find out.

Before he tried to fly off, he looked over at Bokuto, who had to swim quite a ways to his broom. Kuroo forced his broom underwater and straddled it, knowing he’d have to check for the wood for water damage if they made it out of this mess, and flew out of the water towards his friend.

Bokuto stopped paddling and looked up at him.

“Climb on,” Kuroo said, hovering with his feet in the water.

His entire body was shaking, completely out of his control. He held out his hand, tugging Bokuto up and out of the water. With considerable difficulty, Bokuto clamored on Kuroo’s broom and hugged him around the waist for warmth and balance.

“ _Accio broomstick_!” Kuroo cast. Bokuto’s broom flying towards them. Bokuto caught it.

“I’m s-staying here,” Bokuto said. “W-w-warmer.”

Kuroo felt wrap Bokuto’s free arm back around his center.

He flew back to the castle as fast as he could.

 

* * *

 

“Why are you two dragging blankets into the Great Hall?” Sawamura asked.

Sawamura was sitting with his team at the Gryffindor table, but Kuroo and Bokuto paid them no mind. They sat on either side of Sawamura, leaned against him, and sighed in relief.

“Warm,” they said at the same time.

“You’re like a portable heater,” Bokuto said cheerfully as he snuggled closer to the Sawamura. “Way better than a heating charm.”

Kuroo nodded in agreement, not lifting his head from Sawamura’s comfortable shoulder.

Sawamura probably frowned. Kuroo imagined it from his spot on Sawamura’s shoulder.

Sawamura squirmed but didn’t push them away, even with Tanaka and Nishinoya started laughing and Michimiya watching curiously.

“We were playing chicken and neither of us are chicken, apparently,” Bokuto said, reaching for a roll. “We’re better Gryffindors than you, Sawamura.”

Sawamura snorted. “Stupidity does not equal bravery.”

Bokuto didn’t reply. He had stuffed a warm piece of bread into his mouth. He reached across Sawamura and waved a roll in front of Kuroo’s face. Kuroo took it, the bread warm and fluffy in his mouth, almost as warm as Sawamura’s shoulder against his temple.

He wondered if Sawamura would be okay with such innocent physical contact if he knew. Some guys were weird like that, not letting other boys touch them. Sawamura never seemed like that type of person, or maybe he had just gotten used to Bokuto, who never cared about that when it came to hugging, tackling, or snuggling up against someone on a cold day. But if Sawamura thought there was some other intent in such an innocent touch, he may freak out.

"What happened?" Sawamura asked.

"We fell into the lake," Kuroo explained.

"You're the one who tossed water at me!" Bokuto argued. "I had to do something."

“You literally sped up,” Kuroo said to Bokuto. “I would have moved if you hadn’t.”

“Are you two okay?” Michimiya asked. “The lake must be freezing!”

“It was,” Bokuto said, sounding rather pathetic.

“We charmed ourselves dry then got blankets from my room and came here,” Kuroo said. Bokuto had waited in the dungeons outside the common room while Kuroo retrived the thick, warm blankets from his bed, even getting the nicest one from his chest.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Sawamura said, “but I can’t move my arms to eat.”

“We’ll feed you, don’t worry,” Bokuto said, grinning.

Sawamura frowned. “I know you’re serious and it’s not helping.”

Kuroo smiled, closed his eyes, and slowly finished his bread roll. He would move in a second, once the last bit of cold left his body.

 

* * *

 

Somewhere between nearly freezing in the lake and his monster of a Charms exam, Kuroo found his resolve to tell Kenma.

It was so much easier to find Kenma when they were at home, their houses next door, separated by a quick walk around the lake. Kuroo could fly over on his broom—no muggles lived nearby except for Kenma’s parents—and knock on Kenma’s window. He had been doing that since he got his first broom at five years old.

At Hogwarts, Kenma knew every nook and cranny to hide in, if it wasn’t holed up in Ravenclaw Tower. He wasn’t at the Great Hall, or with Akaashi or Yamamoto, who were both at their respective tables.

He decided to wander the castle, not feeling particularly hungry, like the anxiety ate up his stomach and left no place for food or hunger.

He wondered what his time away from Hogwarts would be like if Kenma no longer liked him. He could no longer fly over the lake in the middle of the night, or rely on Kenma to keep him company. He would no longer sleep in Kenma’s bed or sneak down to see their presents early on Christmas morning. They would no longer toss a quaffle around, or play video games together, or share knowing looks of disgust (and knowing looks that they refused to show such disgust) when Kenma’s mother served liver and onions.

Kuroo exhaled shakily and headed to the last of Kenma’s known hideouts. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to see Kenma after all, but there he was, sitting near a quiet suit of armor that watched him play his game over his shoulder.

Kenma heard his footsteps and looked up. Kuroo expected him to look back down, but he didn’t. He paused his game, stood up, and walked over to Kuroo with a frown.

“You’re sweating and pale. If it was Quidditch practice, you’d just be sweating.” Kenma’s frown deepened. “Is it your family? Are they okay?”

Kuroo shook his head quickly. “No, no. I just wanted to talk.”

Kuroo forced himself to look at Kenma’s eyes, not expecting Kenma to be looking back. Eye contact was a rare thing with him.

“Oh,” Kenma said in a soft voice. “Did you want to practice tonight? I’m not doing it, even if you beg.”

Kuroo smiled sadly. He wished he were asking about Quidditch practice with Akaashi and Bokuto.

“I wanted to tell you something—something about me.”

Kenma nodded slowly.

“Kenma, I—“ Kuroo swallowed and it felt like he swallowed his own tongue. It was suddenly very hard to speak and all of the eloquent lines he had prepared suddenly disappeared like he had charmed them away. He tried again with little luck, “I’m—I had this stupid speech—I even wrote a fucking outline like I do for essays—but I can’t remember it. Damn it.”

“It’s okay,” Kenma said quietly. His unsettling gaze remained rested on Kuroo, who honestly could not remember the last time they had held eyes this long. “It’s okay, Kuroo. Just tell me.”

Kuroo was taken aback. “Do you know?”

“If it’s what I’m thinking about, then of course I know. I’m not an idiot.”

Kuroo wondered if they were thinking the same thing. He frowned, searching Kenma’s eyes for an answer and finding none.

“You never said anything.”

“Did you _want_ me to say something?”

Kuroo opened his mouth dumbly then closed it.

“I’m gay. Were we thinking the same thing after all?”

“I thought this was about you becoming an animagus.” Kenma paused. “But I knew that too.”

Kuroo laughed, honestly laughed, harder than he had in ages. Harder than when Bokuto knocked his potion over in class and it turned their eyebrows pink for a week, harder than when Sawamura transfigured his stack of books into a pig that stampeded into the teacher’s desk.

“Can I get a hug?” Kuroo asked, stretching out his arms, wanting, needing that contact for some reason he could not explain.

“Do I _have_ to hug you?” Kenma asked, pulling a face, his nose wrinkled up.

Kuroo smiled and shook his head. “No. I wasn’t expecting you to.”

Kenma shuffled, looking very uncomfortable, then stepped forward and wrapped his arms loosely around Kuroo’s waist. Kuroo returned the hug quickly, pulling Kenma close, pressing his nose down into the dark roots of his hair. Kuroo could feel himself shaking like a leaf and he was sure Kenma could feel it too.

“I said it was okay,” Kuroo muttered, unable to control his trembling body.

Kenma patted his back with stiff awkwardness before rubbing up and down in an attempt to soothe Kuroo.

“I’m so glad you don’t hate me, Kenma.”

Kenma was quiet for a moment then said, “I’d only hate you if you broke every game I own.”

Kuroo laughed and hugged him tighter. Kenma made a distressed noise but did not push Kuroo away until exactly ten seconds had passed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kuroo probably works on the animagi process in the library and doesn't bother to hide the work from Kenma Also I bet a few Ravenclaws have talked about the process before, maybe even joked around about doing it, so Kenma knows some of the details and can figure out what Kuroo and his buddies are up to.


	8. Chapter 8

The castle was completely decked out for Valentine’s Day a full week before the holiday. The Great Hall smelled of fresh flowers, which overflowed from vases, and the floating candles had been switched from a pale yellow to a rose pink. The Gryffindor common room had a spread of chocolate near the fire. The chocolate must have been enchanted because it did not melt despite the heat, which was pleasant. Sawamura and Michimiya often found themselves taking several pieces after rounds before retiring to bed.

Sawamura didn’t really care about Valentine’s Day, but a lot of people did. At breakfast, when Sawamura was not with Kuroo or Bokuto, he was with his teammates. Nishinoya and Tanaka had spent the last two weeks coordinating a complicated plan to ask out Shimizu from Hufflepuff.

This particular morning, they had diagrams. Sawamura frowned at the crude drawings as he slowly ate his yogurt.

“And who are you getting to dress up as the cherubs you’re levitating?” Sawamura asked, honestly curious but more concerned.

“Ennoshita said no,” Nishinoya said, quite chipper for so early in the morning, “but Kinoshita and Narita owe us for that time we got them out of detention.”

Sawamura arched an eyebrow. “Out of detention?”

Nishinoya looked down at Sawamura’s prefect badge then put on a perfectly fake smile.

Michimiya slid in next to them along with one of their beaters, a seventh year girl with a backhand that gave Sawamura nightmares. Michimiya looked at the plans quickly.

“Oh, you took my advice!” Michimiya said.

Sawamura gawked at her. “Please tell me you did not recommend fake wings, diapers, and levitating fourth years.”

Michimiya looked terrified. “I recommended lilies! Kiyoko likes lilies more than roses. They make her sneeze.”

“Even her sneezes are cute,” Tanaka said wistfully.

“Like kitten sneezes,” Nishinoya agreed.

“You’ve obviously never heard her elephant sneeze, then,” Michimiya said with a playful grin.

“Tanaka, Nishinoya, why can’t you just ask her out normally?” Sawamura asked, exasperated.

“Because it’s Kiyoko!” Tanaka said. “All the guys are going to ask her out like last year. We need to stand out.”

“So you’re _both_ asking her out?”

He was bewildered at this point.

He had seen Tanaka and Nishinoya bet on who could shove more jelly beans up their nose, watched them corkscrew their brooms straight into a tree, and shout at a wall on the seventh floor corridor because they swore it was a bathroom that one time Tanaka really had to go, but this was by far the strangest thing they had done.

Sawamura had taken more points from Gryffindor than any other house since becoming prefect, and most of those points were form Tanaka, Nishinoya, and their three roommates. At least Ennoshita had some restraint and could control his friends to an extent.

“Oh, let them have fun,” Michimiya said. “It won’t hurt anyone.”

“Want to bet?”

“Maybe…” She grinned. “A no stakes bet?”

“Deal.”

Sawamura slid the diagrams in front of her. Her eyes went wide and Sawamura laughed.

“Okay, Sawamura’s right. You’re not doing this. One of you will probably die.”

“I win,” Sawamura said, smug. Michimiya gently kicked him and stuck her tongue out. Sawamura kept going, having fun, “When we have rounds of Valentine’s Day, you get to interrupting all the couples with their tongues in the wrong mouths.”

“It’s called kissing, Sawamura,” she said, teasing, her cheeks a little red. “And we said no stakes.”

“There’s always stakes. And what we caught that Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff doing was _kissing_?”

Michimiya shuddered at the memory. “There was so much drool!”

“It was disgusting,” Sawamura agreed.

“Like what we’re watching?” Tanaka whispered too Nishinoya, a little too loud.

Sawamura glared at them. The two smiled and waved innocently.

“Seriously, though, we’re putting a stop to this,” Michimiya said, grabbing a spoonful of granola and dumping it into a bowl of strawberry-banana yogurt. “It’s our job as prefects.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Nishinoya said with a salute. He didn’t look all that put down. Probably because it was Michimiya saying it. Nishinoya was weak to a pretty face.

Sawamura gently kicked Michimiya like she had him moments ago. “Will you pass me an orange, _ma’am_?”

She kicked him back a little harder, put on a pleasant smile, and lobbed an orange to him.

 

* * *

 

“I can’t believe I’m going to be single on Valentine’s Day _again_ this year,” Bokuto groaned as they sat down at a hidden away round table in the library to do their homework.

Sawamura chortled as he pulled out his books. Kuroo settled down to his left and Bokuto to his right.

“I have rounds on Valentine’s Day,” Sawamura said. “Arashi warned Michimiya and me to be on the look out for ‘extra gross behavior.’”

“I do not pity you,” Kuroo said earnestly.

It was never fun catching people out after hours because then he had to take points away, which meant a fair share of the school’s troublemakers had it out for him. Catching couples was always the worst. There weren’t many places for couples to go, especially after hours, and the prefects were students themselves so they knew all the nooks and crannies where people snogged, or worse.

They took out their books and scrolls, setting to work on their assignments. They had a History of Magic essay, a water charm to practice for Herbology, and star charts for Astronomy. Kuroo and Sawamura also had Arithmancy, while Bokuto had to write and illustrate his dream journal for Divination.

They managed to work for a solid hour, which was honestly more than Sawamura was ever expecting, before Bokuto demanded they took a break.

“Are you doing anything for Valentine’s Day, Kuroo?” Bokuto asked. “Girls keep asking me if you’re single and I say you are.”

Kuroo gave him a sideways glance. “So you’re the reason girls keep asking me out? Merlin, Bo, you know I hate it when they do that.”

“Why do you hate it?” Bokuto asked, completely astonished. “I would love for dozens girls to ask me out.”

“It’s been two girls,” Kuroo corrected, “and I’m not interested. You know that.”

“How can you not be interested?”

“I’m just not.”

“Why?”

Kuroo grumbled, annoyed, and then snapped, “Do you really want to know?”

Sawamura frowned because that came out a lot more seriously than he was expecting. Usually Kuroo danced around the rumors about him and girls, and there were a lot of rumors out there. Sawamura figured it was some kiss-and-tell thing, or maybe there just wasn’t anything to the rumors and Kuroo didn’t want to admit it to Bokuto, who so clearly envied Kuroo for his fictive exploits.

Sawamura looked at Kuroo, who almost looked like he regretted that outburst.

Bokuto frowned, clearly catching on to the odd mood as well. “If you don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to. But if you want to then, yeah, I wanna know what your deal about girls is.”

Kuroo exhaled slowly, looking between Sawamura and Bokuto, and then around to see who else was sitting near them. There was no one in their quiet, secluded study spot.

“Kuroo,” Sawamura said, “are you okay?”

“I—“ Kuroo pinched the bridge of his nose. “Merlin, I didn’t mean to bring this up now.”

“You don’t have to—“

But Kuroo cut Sawamura off and said, “I’m gay.”

Sawamura recalled every conversation he had ever heard Bokuto and Kuroo having about girls. Everything rearranged and fell into place.

Sawamura wanted to assure Kuroo that he most definitely did not care about that kind of thing. Bokuto turning into an owl was far stranger than a boy liking other boys, and Bokuto’s ability was not unnatural or abnormal in the least, so why would Kuroo’s sexuality be something unnatural or abnormal?

But before Sawamura could get a word, Bokuto surged forward across Sawamura, cupped Kuroo’s face in his hands, and smashed their mouths together.

Sawamura wouldn’t call it a real kiss. It was more of a violent meeting, their lips rubbing together with no real gentleness or emotion. Kuroo made a startled noise that was so comical and panicked that Sawamura would have laughed in any other situation.

Any other situation that was not Bokuto kissing his best friend seconds after he came out.

Bokuto pulled back, still holding Kuroo’s face. Kuroo’s face was bright red and his eyes were wide, while Bokuto looked contemplative.

Sawamura stared, mouth agape, and wondered if they both just had their first kiss. Sugawara was going to love this.

“I don’t get it,” Bokuto said calmly. “But okay. It explains a lot.”

Bokuto sat back down, seemingly satisfied, and opened a chocolate frog. He read the card, completely forgetting the candy, which jumped onto his essay and made a mess.

Sawamura looked over at Kuroo, who was still blushing furiously. Sawamura grinned and nudged him with his elbow.

“C’mon,” Sawamura said, “let’s do this essay and be done with it.”

“So you really don’t care?” Kuroo asked. “Neither of you?”

“Of course not,” Sawamura answered quickly, no hesitation whatsoever. “Who you’re attracted to doesn’t matter. There’s nothing strange or wrong about it either.”

Bokuto nodded in agreement as he grabbed and then munched on his chocolate frog. “I can turn into an owl. If I’m normal, you are too, even if you fancy the same team.”

Kuroo was quiet for a long moment and none of them spoke. Then Kuroo said, “When the hell did you get so eloquent, Bo?”

Sawamura laughed while Bokuto crossed his arms and said, “You guys really don’t appreciate me enough!”

Kuroo laughed along with Sawamura, seeming to be at ease.

 

* * *

 

Kuroo was on edge and it wasn’t just from coming out, though Sawamura was sure that had affected him. It couldn’t have been an easy thing to do. But there was also a Quidditch match coming up and Kuroo would be facing off against his childhood friend Kozume for the first time.

The moment Valentine’s Day was over, the entire castle focused their attention on the Slytherin-Ravenclaw match. The way the school treated Slytherin always left a sour taste in Sawamura’s mouth, though it was worse when just a week ago, the girls jeering at the Slytherin team had been asking Kuroo out and the boys had been asking for his Defense Against the Dark Arts notes so they didn’t fail the upcoming exam.

Bokuto was clearly struggling about which team to root for—Kuroo played for Slytherin but Akaashi played for Ravenclaw. He ended up painting one check blue and bronze, and the other green and silver, sending death glares at anyone who questions the Slytherin colors he so proudly displayed.

Sawamura and Bokuto sat in the Hufflepuff stands together and were shortly joined by Shirofuku and her friends—Michimiya, Shimizu, and Mika, who was surprisingly not with her boyfriend Daishou. Maybe the Ravenclaw and Slytherin could not decide who to route for and both decided to cheer for their own houses.

Shirofuku had brought several bags of pop-corn fresh from the kitchen, handing them out. She had butter, salted, caramel, kettle, and one with bits of candy that were half-melted. She even had bottles of sugary juice. Sawamura opted for a cool bottle of fruit punch.

“This is the best,” Bokuto said, tossing a piece of pop-corn up into the air and catching it in his mouth.

“Oh, lemme try next,” Shirofuku said.

Bokuto opened his mouth and Shirofuku shot a piece of pop-corn straight at his eye, but they both laughed.

Michimiya leaned down from her spot behind Sawamura, grabbing a few pieces of his pop-corn. He snatched his bag away from her hand.

“Hey,” he said playfully, not really minding. “You have your own.”

“Yours is kettle, though,” Michimiya said, licking the sticky sweet substance from her fingers. “Mine’s butter.” She held out her bag and tilted it back and forth, knocking around the pop-corn inside for him to hear. “Trade?”

“As long as we trade back.”

“Deal. Five minutes?”

“Five minutes,” he agreed.

He swapped their bags, munching on the buttered pop-corn.

Azumane and several other members of the Hufflepuff team joined them shortly after the girls.

As the teams entered the Pitch, the crowds screamed, the noise so loud Sawamura thought he might go deaf. People banged with their feet, charmed their voices, and waved their banners and flags with pride.

“Who do you think has the better seeker, Yukie?” Michimiya asked. She looked over at Shirofuku, who was still trying to toss pop-corn into Bokuto’s open mouth. Bokuto looked like a baby bird waiting for regurgitated food from his mother.

“I’ve only seen them both play once,” Shirofuku said. A piece of pop-corn hit Bokuto’s chin. He snatched it up and ate it. “Kozume didn’t do any feints last time he played, but Suzumeda did a lot. She’s good. I like her.”

“We know _that_ ,” Mika said with a tone and smile that only the girls seemed to understand. Even Shimizu smiled, laughing softly into her hands.

Shirofuku didn’t seem bothered. She tossed another piece of pop-corn towards Bokuto.

It was Ravenclaw that won in the end when the snitch practically flew into Kozume’s hand while Suzumeda was on the other side of the Pitch.

“It was lucky,” Shirofuku said after. “That’s the worst kind of loss and win.”

“Mhm,” Michimiya hummed in agreement.

 

* * *

 

A small rainstorm came one afternoon, casting dreary gray clouds overhead and sending down a light drizzle of freezing water that made the walk to Herbology unbearable without a charm to block out the rain. Michimiya had a muggle device she called an umbrella. Sawamura was familiar with it, but she still explained it to him anyways as he joined her and Shimizu under its cover.

Kuroo, Sawamura, and Bokuto spent the afternoon on the fourth floor, sitting on a stone bench by a window and watching the storm to see if it progressed any further. They needed a thunderstorm to complete the animagi transformation and while thunderstorms rarely happened in February, it was worth keeping an eye on.

Kuroo seemed a little surprised when Bokuto leaned his back against his shoulder, resting his weight on Kuroo, who eventually relaxed and gave a small smile that Sawamura probably wasn’t meant to see.

There was no thunder or lightning that night, the storm dying out just after dinner, which they missed while waiting on that bench. So they made their way down to the kitchens and ate sandwiches and chips on one of the counters; the house elves had always liked Kuroo and had no qualms about giving him and his friends food after hours.

When there was a Dueling Club meeting, it meant Kuroo spent more time with Daisou and his pack of dogs. Sawamura didn’t much care for Daishou or his friends, but it’s not like he could change Kuroo’s mind, or his passion for dueling.

Sawamura resigned himself to a quiet night without practice before he had rounds, this time with Shimizu from Ravenclaw, as Michimiya had an exam tomorrow in Muggle Studies.

He planned to spend the night catching up on homework so he could have a relaxing weekend, or as a relaxing weekend as he could with long Quidditch practices and rounds.

That was, until Bokuto approached Sawamura after dinner.

“I really wanna fly,” Bokuto said and Sawamura could instantly tell he meant as an owl, not on a broomstick. “Could you go into the forest with me? I just don’t want to be alone.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s just that animals don’t like me, and I’m having this weird day that I can’t explain, and I really want to fly but don’t want to be alone out there.”

Sawamura nodded. “Of course. Want to go now?”

Boktuo perked up instantly. “Yeah!”

The grounds were covered in a cool, heavy fog that made it hard to see. Sawamura light his wand while Bokuto rushed ahead towards the forest edge where he usually transformed. His strides were long and Sawamura had to practically jog to keep up with him.

Sawamura knew that owls had an impeccable sense of sound, which allowed them to hunt in complete darkness. Sawamura didn’t know how helpful that would be to Bokuto when he was flying between trees.

Sawamura sighed. He had a feeling this would not end well.

When they reached the forest edge, Sawamura watched as Bokuto transformed, his clothes disappearing with him. It always managed to take his breath away. Lately, he found himself wondering what it felt like and how he could control it so easily without a wand, if it was just a thought or a feeling he had to dig up.

Sawamura wondered what would happen if they completed the animagi process, but neither Sawamura nor Kuroo could summon that feeling and they just stood there, not knowing what to do. The thought made him chortle.

Bokuto hopped over, landing at his feet, and cocked his head at him. His yellow eyes gazed up at Sawaura curiously.

“You’re fine,” Sawamura assured. “Just thinking to myself. Let’s go into the forest.”

Bokuto flapped his wings, seemingly happy, and took off into the woods, slowly gliding while Sawamura walked behind. Bokuto swooped from branch to branch, stopping to hoot at Sawamura, as if taunting him for being so slow.

Sawamura did not want to move any faster, though. The fog was not as thick in the forest, but it was still hard to see and he did not want to injury himself on slippery leaves or a protruding root so close to a match. Even if charms and potions could heal many wounds, there were still some that healers preferred to leave alone, like sprains and twists.

The fog was disorienting, making it difficult to know which direction they were going. He knew it was almost time for the sun to set, but it was hard to tell the time of day when he could not see the sky, when there was no light in the forest at all.

Worse, there were no clear paths in this part of the forest for them to follow, only a maze of untamed trees, fallen foliage, and little creatures that scurried by his feet. If they turned ever so slightly, Sawamura didn’t think he would realize, and before he could know it, he could be walking backwards.

Without Bokuto, who could easily fly up above the trees and fog to see where the castle was, Sawamura would have a hell of a time getting back to the castle.

So when Bokuto landed next to a snake on the ground and panicked, flying away, Sawamura ran after him.

“Bokuto, slow down!” Sawamura shouted. “It was a garden snake—it won’t hurt you!”

He could make out the faint outline of Bokuto’s owl form, which dodged trees skillfully ten feet ahead of Sawamura, who struggled to keep up. He couldn’t run as fast as an owl could fly and Bokuto wasn’t even at his max speed.

When the innate, animal panic cleared from Bokuto’s mind, he stopped and turned back around, transforming in front of Sawamura.

“Where are we?” Sawamura asked.

“I’m so sorry!” Bokuto said, tugging at his hair. “I just panicked—it was a snake—and I know it couldn’t hurt me but I flew away anyways because my owl doesn’t—”

Sawamura put his hands on his knees and bent in half, panting heavily. “It’s okay. It’s okay.” He lifted his head slightly to look at Bokuto as he tried to catch his breath. He repeated the question, “Do you know where we are?”

Bokuto’s face dropped, his eyes going wide, and he looked around quickly. He took out his wand and cast a light charm so he could see through the fog.

“Um,” Bokuto said, drawing out the sound. “Let me fly above the trees and see.”

Sawamura nodded and stood up straight, wiping a line of sweat off his forehead. It was cool out, but the fog was humid.

Bokuto transformed once more and made his way up above the tree line. There were hardly any leaves on the trees this time of year, which hopefully made his assent easier.

As he waited for Bokuto to fly back down, Sawamura waved his wand and looked around. He saw a figure ahead of him, a slight movement of a large shadow. He pinched his eyebrows together and sent a ball of light in that direction, wondering if it was a stag.

But it was not a stag.

Sawamura inhaled sharply as the centaur moved back into the fog, away from him, the ball of light dissipating in its wake.

Bokuto swooped back down, transforming next to Sawamura, who latched a hand onto Bokuto’s arm and tugged him closer.

“I saw a centaur,” Sawamura said, sure the panic was evident in his voice.

Centaurs were not the mindless creatures some media made them out to be. They were intelligent, but they could be violent if necessary, and mob mentality was not restricted to humans. If there was a pack of them near by and they saw a couple of students in their forest, there could be an issue.

Bokuto furrowed his eyebrows. “What is a centaur doing out of the forbidden forest?”

Sawamura swallowed thickly. “I don’t think he’s out of the forbidden forest. I think we’re in it.”

“Shit,” Bokuto cursed. “We’re not _in_ the forbidden forest. We’re right at the edge of it. I didn’t know the creatures actually roamed this far from the center. If we go west, we should make it out without running into anything.”

Sawamura nodding, trusting in Bokuto, who knew these forests better than anyone else.

They charmed their wands to act as compasses, which glowed when pointed north, and began to head west like Bokuto suggested. They walked at a brisk pace, not wanting to run and release adrenaline-like pheromones that could attract any of the forbidden forest’s more dangerous creatures. Because there were far worse things in that woods than centaurs, and Sawamura was not eager to find out which population of beasts lived there.

Sawamura had never been in the forbidden forest and, for some reason, he expected it to look different than the rest of the woods surrounding the castle, but the trees were the same, the ground was just as muddy, and there was not bloody splattered everywhere. It looked like a regular forest.

As they walked, Sawamura kept seeing things out of the corner of his eye. He turned his wand back into a light while Bokuto guided them west towards the castle. This time, the shadow was a stage. The next, a fox.

Then, once again, he saw something larger, something that could not be a simple animal.

Sawamura grabbed onto Bokuto’s arm, stopping him, but Bokuto’s hair already seemed to be standing on end, his animal instincts kicking in.

“You’re the one in Care of Magical Creatures,” Sawamura whispered harshly. “What do we do?”

“We only covered them in theory. Only NEWT students actually come out into this forest.” Bokuto stepped closer to Sawamura, who still had a hand fisted into Bokuto’s robe.

Bokuto dropped the compass charm and Sawamura wished Kuroo were here with his infinite knowledge of jinxes and hexes.

“What does theory say, then?” Sawamura hissed urgently as the shadow seemed to grow larger, the centaur approaching.

“Be respectful—they’re creatures with their own culture, not animals for humans to horde and control,” Bokuto said, taking a step back, Sawamura following. “They’re very proud. Respect their territory. Don’t attack them.”

Sawamura and Bokuto froze as the creature came into view.

The creature had the body of a caramel-colored horse but where its head should be was the torso of a man, his chest bare and pale blond hair long and wild, twisted into a braid and tied off with vines. The centaur had astonishingly blue eyes.

They walked straight towards Sawamura and Bokuto, who appeared frozen in fear, no matter how much Sawamura tugged on his arm.

“You should not be here, young ones,” the centaur said. “This is our home. Yours is in the mountain of stone.”

“We got lost,” Sawamura said honestly. Bokuto nodded his head rapidly.

The centaur looked curious at Bokuto then. “It has been a long time since a nature spirit has lived here.”

Bokuto went stiff, like every animal instinct he had was telling him to get the hell out.

“I’m not,” Bokuto said in an uncharacteristically small voice. “My mom was one. I don’t protect this forest or live in it.”

“Then you must go,” the centaur said rather calmly. “I will accompany you and your human friend.”

Sawamura and Bokuto shared an unsure look.

“If you were merely a human, I would have you fend for yourselves,” the centaur admitted. “But you are more than human. Your kind has protected forests and rivers from harm for many, many years, even if it meant losing their lives. If I were to offend a nature spirit’s offspring, I would lose the right to live in a forest such as this.”

Bokuto nodded awkwardly, clearly not sure what else to do.

As the centaur began to walk, Sawamura and Bokuto followed alongside it, not wanting to stray too far ahead or too far behind.

They walked in silence for a long while, and Sawamura wondered how far they had gone into the forest. Then, Bokuto asked, “Have you ever met a nature spirit?”

“No,” the centaur answered. “They were gone from this forest long before I was born. There are few left in this world.”

“That’s why my mom had me with a human,” Bokuto said, his voice tight, like he was sad for her. “I don’t think she could find a mate…”

“The stars say the forests and rivers will long out last any other creature on this planet. Nature can survive without their guardian spirits, but not for long. So I would not worry about your kind. Perhaps, like nature itself, nature spirits are evolving, or there may be a new race of guardians. There may be more of you than you think, young one.”

Bokuto’s eyes lit up.

As they reached the forests edge, the spans of grassy hills visible in the clearing, the centaur halted.

“Do not enter this forest again,” the centaur warned. He looked at Sawamura. “Especially you. Without your friend here, who knows what may have happened.”

Sawamura nodded.

The centaur returned his nod, turned around, and walked back into the forbidden forest.

Sawamura and Bokuto shared a quick glance then ran for the clearing, sprinting all the way back to the castle, eager to get away from the forbidden forest and to tell Kuroo what had just happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized Bokuto and Sawamura don't have much alone time in this fic so that obviously means they wander in the forbidden forest together.
> 
> Also, this was Bokuto's thought process for kissing Kuroo: "A guy liking guys? I never thought about guys. Do I like guys? If I liked any guys, it'd probably be Kuroo or Sawamura. Let's see. Huh. Guess I don't."


	9. Chapter 9

Kuroo made his way to the Great Hall with Daishou and Daishou’s roommates. When they crossed the threshold to the hall, Kuroo spotted Bokuto and Sawamura hunched together. He looked over at Daishou and his friends. Daishou rolled his eyes, waved, and said he’d seen him at Herbology.

Kuroo made his way over to the Hufflepuff table where the two were side-by-side reading a letter. An owl sat nearby pecking at the bread bowl.

“Sugawara again?” Kuroo asked as he sat down across from his friends.

“He’s back on the team,” Bokuto said, clearly happy.

“That’s great. Wait. Did he beat that prodigy who took his spot?”

“Not exactly,” Sawamura said, pushing the letter towards Kuroo, along with a tin of sweets. Kuroo hoped they were chocoballs. “That Kageyama kid was kicked off the team by his teammates. Some of the older students asked Sugawara to play for them until the season ends.”

Kuroo whistled lowly. He was sure Sugawara would be happy to be back on the team, but he probably wasn’t happy about the circumstances. Kuroo knew he wouldn’t be if that were him.

Kuroo opened the tin and saw chocoballs. He smiled, popped one into his mouth, and read through the letter. They were calling that Kageyama guy the King of the Pitch. 

“They say there’s not going to be any more snow this season,” Sawamura said.

“Awesome.” Bokuto grinned, reached across the table, and grabbed a chocoball too. “I’m sick of the cold.”

“That also means it will start raining soon,” Sawamura said.

April brought the heaviest rains to the castle, but March was known for its fair share of storms.

Kuroo looked up from the letter and looked between his two friends. “We need to keep an eye on the weather for lightning storms.”

It was the last step of the animagi process. They had to drink the last of the potion in the middle of a lightning storm and cast the spell one more time.

They were so close Kuroo could almost taste it.

“What if there’s a thunderstorm during our match?” Bokuto asked with a wide-eyed expression, looking at Sawamura. The Hufflepuff-Gryffindor match was just a week a way.

Sawamura frowned. “I can’t just stop playing. My team would kill me.”

“I bet Michimiya gets first dibs,” Kuroo said, knowing it was a smart-ass remark but he couldn’t resist.

Sawamura gave him a look. “Let’s just hope that doesn’t happen. If it does, knock me off my broom,” he said to Bokuto with a resolved, serious expression. “Hard enough to get me hurt.”

“Then you’ll be rushed to the hospital wing,” Kuroo pointed out.

Sawamura paused for a moment. “I doubt either of you have a batch of polyjuice potion lying around, so I’d just have to escape.”

Kuroo laughed. “I think if lightning does come, you just hope your seekers are half as good as Suzumeda and they catch the snitch quickly.”

“You’re getting close to her, huh?” Bokuto said, more of a statement than a question, though his tone was curious.

Kuroo shrugged. “She’s a good teammate. Best seeker our team has had since we got here, too.”

“Yukie says she’s good, too. She’s actually talked about joining the Hufflepuff team just to face off against her, since apparently Suzumeda was never part of that secret Quidditch thing.”

Kuroo frowned at the thought of Hufflepuff, which already had Bokuto as a chaser and Azumane and Aone as blockers. He thought of that team gaining one of the fastest seekers Kuroo had ever seen.

Sawamura had a similar expression, probably coming to the same conclusion, and looked at Kuroo.

“Sabotage?” Kuroo asked.

“Sabotage,” Sawamura agreed with a grin, obviously joking.

 

* * *

 

Kuroo managed to convince Kenma to join Bokuto, Akaashi, and him for one goal. He now owed Kenma a new video game, a box of honey sugar quills, and his old notes form Defense Against the Dark Arts, but it was probably worth it.

In the summer, Kuroo could spend as much time flying with Kenma as he wanted (rather, spend as much time bugging Kenma to fly with him as he wanted). At school, it was harder, especially now that Kenma had his own team.

Kuroo’s team was out for the season, their total point score already falling below that of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, who still had another match to rack of points in. Only the teams with the top two total points could fight over the title of Quidditch House Cup. The other two teams were done for the season once their point values fell below the others.

Suzumeda had cried after the match and Kuroo honestly hadn’t known what to do. He ended up rubbing her back in the common room and asking if she wanted to get wasted. She laughed and told him no.

Unless Gryffindor pulled a crazy high final score, and Bokuto didn’t score a single point for Hufflepuff, it would probably be Ravenclaw versus Hufflepuff for the Quiddtich House Cup.

“I don’t get why you want to fly with me,” Kenma muttered as they made their way down to the Pitch for late night practice. Bokuto had already sprinted down the hill, Akaashi close behind to make sure he didn’t trip and hurt himself. “It’s not like at home. You have other people to fly with.”

“I like flying with you,” Kuroo said. “And I know you slack off during your team practice.”

Kenma hesitated. “You spy on us?”

“No, but I figured you did,” Kuroo said, grinning. Kenma had a sour expression. “Just one goal. Maybe more if you’re feeling like it!”

“I don’t want to.”

They joined Bokuto and Akaashi in the broom shed, taking their broomsticks off the wall and heading out to the Pitch. The March winds had begun, sharp and strong. Kuroo’s robes whipped as they took to the sky.

 

* * *

 

As the Hufflepuff-Gryffindor match drew closer, Sawamura and Bokuto’s interactions became more intense. The same thing happened before any of them were scheduled to face off against one another, but it was most obvious with Sawamura and Bokuto. They were never angry; they had a quiet air of observation whenever they were together, looking at each other like they were trying to pick apart a tough exam question.

Kuroo never knew who to cheer for when his friends faced off. His house was clearly not going to be cheering for their rival, Gryffindor. He thought about it logically.

Gryffindor had the better keeper. Nishinoya had been on the team since his second year and was a downright terror. That new better on their team, Tanaka, had the potential to be frightening, but right now he was nothing compared to Azumane and Aone on Hufflepuff, who formed an iron-clad defense that made up for their rather mediocre keeper.

Then there were the chasers. Hufflepuff heavily favored Bokuto when he was in a good mode for obvious reasons—Bokuto was quickly rising in the ranks as one of the best chasers Hogwarts had had in the last decade. It wouldn’t be long before important people started to take notice, like _Quidditch Monthly_.

Gryffindor’s trio of chasers was something else entirely. They did not have a powerhouse scorer like Bokuto, but they worked well together, especially Sawamura and Michimiya. Kuroo didn’t know if the chasers had practiced signals, but the chasers always knew when to toss to each other without shouting out their intentions. Kuroo was certain it was not some type of telepathy spell; Sawamura would not stand for that.

It was hard to make a definitive call on who would win.

So Kuroo did what he usually did. He sat on the edge of the Ravenclaw and Slytherin houses with Kenma, put yellow and black face paint on one cheek and red and gold on the other, and watched his friends duke it out.

Daishou and Mika sat in front of them, shoulder to shoulder, and Kuroo wanted to kick them down the stands to get them out of his sight. He found himself not caring about his friend and his girlfriend when he realized Sawamura and Bokuto would be battling head to head for the quaffle toss.

Bokuto managed to grab the quaffle, pushing past Sawamura and flying down the Pitch. Sawamura was hot on his tail, shoving up against him, and Kuroo could practical imagine them grinning at each other in challenge.

Higher in the air, away from the action of quaffles and bludgers, the seekers were circling the Pitch for the golden snitch.

While Bokuto was distracted with Sawamura, Michimiya flanked Bokuto’s other side, leaving him with little space to move or toss.

Bokuto dropped in altitude suddenly, breaking away from Sawamura and Michimiya, and tossed behind him towards one of his teammates. The Hufflepuff chaser flew down the Pitch unmarked, scoring.

The score remained tied for the majority of the game, but Hufflepuff won when they caught the snitch.

 

* * *

 

Sawamura didn’t seem upset about the match for long, vowing to defeat Bokuto and every other team next year on their way from Charms to Transfiguration. Bokuto returned his challenging gaze with one of his own and said, “As captain, I’ll take you down personally.”

Kuroo and Sawamura looked at each other, their jaws dropping at the ame time. Then Kuroo pounced onto Bokuto’s back while Sawamura ruffled his hair with some force.

Kuroo had been thinking that may be the case somewhere in the back of his mind. Bokuto, Azumane, and Aone were the only players that weren’t seventh years. Bokuto had been on the team since third year, the longest out of the three of them, and even though Bokuto had his oddities, he would make a good captain if the team could match and control his mood.

“When did you find out?” Sawamura asked eagerly.

“The captain told us after the match,” Bokuto said, smiling from ear to ear. “They wanted us to know our last match as a team would be against Ravenclaw and the second it’s over, I’m in charge. Which is a bright overwhelming, but also completely awesome. I'm already trying to convince Yukie to try out as seeker next year."

Kuroo still hung onto Bokuto, who puffed his chest out with pride. Kuroo felt happy for his friend.

“Were you waiting all this time to tell us so you could show us up?” Kuroo asked.

There were other members on the Slytherin and Gryffindor team that deserved to be captain before Kuroo and Sawamura, though maybe in their seventh year.

“Maybe,” Bokuto said dubiously, which meant he most certainly had been withholding the information to show them up at just the right moment.

“We have to celebrate,” Kuroo said. “Let’s get dinner from the kitchens and go down by the lake. I can get some fire whiskey.”

“No more fire whiskey,” Sawamura said sternly.

“All those in favor of fire whiskey, say aye,” Kuroo said.

Kuroo and Bokuto both lifted a hand into the air and said, “Aye!”

“Two votes against one,” Kuroo said with a shit-eating grin. “Sorry, Sawamura, but it looks like we’re getting drunk tonight.”

Sawamura sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Kuroo knew come dinner time, when they were down by the lake, on the far side where no one bothered to walk to, Sawamura would be singing a different song.

 

* * *

 

Classes had begun long, complicated reviews for OWLs, which meant that during Arithmancy, Kuroo and Sawamura had to spread out a dozen number charts to figure out their assignment. They eventually gave up using the table and moved to the floor, using their chairs and laps for extra space. Several other students mimicked them and their professor didn’t seem to mind as long as they got their work done.

Kuroo stretched his arms high above his head when they left class, enjoying the pleasant crack of his back that made Sawamura grimace slightly.

“What are you plans for the afternoon?” Kuroo asked. “Doing the Astronomy homework?”

“I finished it two nights ago. Have you done it?”

“Yeah. Did it last week after class. I was thinking of bugging Kenma, but if you don’t have any plans we could hang out, toss a quaffle around or something.”

Sawamura shrugged. “Maybe after dinner.”

Suddenly, an arm draped over the back of Kuroo’s neck. It tugged him down several inches and he startled. It was not Bokuto, who was shorter than Kuroo but not short enough to have to tug Kuroo down to reach his shoulders properly.

Kuroo tilted his head to the side and saw Arashi standing behind him and Sawamura, an arm around Sawamura’s shoulder as well.

“Were you waiting for us?” Sawamura asked, clearly confused why Arashi was there.

“Yeah. I have a favor to ask,” Arashi said.

“We don’t owe you any more favors,” Kuroo replied calmly.

Arashi nodded. “Right. You don’t owe me, but I’m asking around. I don’t know if you follow the weather, but there’s a massive lightning storm rolling in. Now, just between the three of us, I’m terrified of lightning. I was supposed to be on rounds tonight, but can you two cover for me?”

Kuroo did not believe in coincidences. His mind raced a mile a minute while he struggled to keep his face blank, just in case he was jumping to the wrong conclusion. He looked over at Sawamura, who was doing his best to do the same.

He did not believe in coincidences, which meant the only reasonable explanation was that Arashi knew they were waiting for a lightning storm.

A horrible feeling washed over Kuroo.

“So what do you say?” Arashi asked pleasantly. He was a damn good actor if Kuroo was right.

“Sure,” Kuroo replied, “but you owe us a favor in return.”

“Sounds fair. You have anything in mind?”

Kuroo and Sawamura’s eyes met. Sawamura nodded briefly.

“Do you know?” Kuroo asked.

“Oh, did you have something planned?” Arashi asked innocently. “My bad. I just thought you guys might appreciate a good lightning storm.”

Kuroo did not look away from Arashi.

Arashi kept his voice quiet when he continued talking so that no one else could hear him: “Did you really think the librarian wouldn’t notice when a book goes missing from the restricted section, or that she wouldn’t tell the professors, or that the professors wouldn’t alert the head boy and girl? And don’t you think if a certain group of students with access to the restricted section suddenly asked for strange potion ingredients, that head boy would notice?”

Kuroo had and it looked like Sawamura had considered that too, but neither of them spoke, not wanting to incriminate themselves.

Arashi shook his head and clicked his tongue. “I thought better of you guys. Especially you, Kuroo. Kozume talked so highly of you, too.”

Arashi knew.

Arashi knew they were breaking the law. He knew they had asked him to steal from Nekomata, that they had been sneaking around all year, that they were performing illegal magic underage. He probably knew they had no plans to register with the Ministry either, which could land them in Azkaban if anyone found out.

It had crossed Kuroo’s mind when he had been in bed at night, half asleep, an annoying _what if_ that left him anxious for the briefest of moments. He pushed it off. Arashi was a good actor, apparently, and Kuroo hadn’t been sharp enough.

He wondered if Arashi knew about Bokuto, which was just as bad in his eyes.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kuroo lied, looking head and away from Arashi.

“Yes, you do,” Arashi said, sure.

“If what you’re saying about us is true—and it’s not—you helped us,” Sawamura said in disbelief. He lowered his voice, “You stole from Nekomata for us.”

“Steal is such a harsh word. There’s only a handful of NEWT students with keys to his stash. There’s a protocol for when we want ingredients. You ask him and he gives it, usually with no questions asked.”

“And did he ask questions?” Kuroo asked, a grave feeling washing over him.

“He asked who it was for and for me to figure out where you guys were brewing your little project. It wasn’t that hard when you guys were literally running around in the fall. Don’t worry, he didn’t tell anyone else. He just checked your potion from time to time to make sure you weren’t going to get yourselves killed.”

Arashi looked over at Sawamura then back at Kuroo.

“Like I said, don’t worry,” the head boy said. “I won’t tell anyone and you won’t owe me any favors.”

“I don’t believe you,” Kuroo said bluntly.

Arashi laughed. “That’s the response I expected from a Slytherin. You know, when I was being sorted, the hat was stuck on whether to sort me to Ravenclaw or Slytherin. I said it’d be better for me in the long run to be Ravenclaw and the hat said I was wise beyond my years.”

“Why Ravenclaw and not Slytherin?” Sawamura asked.

“No one wants to vote for a Minister of Magic that was in Slytherin.”

Arashi slid his arms off of their shoulders. He walked between them, passing them, but looked over his shoulder and said, “Don’t forgot to keep an eye out for any students out of bed when you’re on rounds tonight. As the prefects on duty, you can’t possibly let any marauders run amok.”

Arashi waved and walked away.

 

* * *

 

Kuroo and Sawamura found Bokuto at the Hufflepuff table for dinner. They each grabbed one of his arms, pulled him to his feet, and dragged him out of the hall. Bokuto went along quietly with an owl-like stare, his eyes wide as he looked furiously between Kuroo and Sawamura.

“Did the storm start?” Bokuto asked as they began to descend the stairs to the dungeons. “Wait. Why are you taking me downstairs?”

Kuroo led them to a corridor that branched off, one that was hardly used. They finally released Bokuto, who spun around and stared at them.

“Arashi knows,” Kuroo said miserably.

Bokuto’s eyes went impossibly wider. “About the animagi thing, or my feathery little problem?”

“Just the animagi thing,” Sawamura said.

“As far as we know,” Kuroo muttered. “We got played. This entire year, he knew. Nekomata too.”

Bokuto threw his hands up to his head, raking up his hair, and began to pace. “Nekomata knew? And he didn’t stop us? Oh man. Are they gonna wait until you guys complete it then lock you up?”

“Nekomata wouldn’t do that to students,” Kuroo said. He knew his head of house well enough to know that. “He’d stop them before they got started, but he wouldn’t purposefully set them up. If he waited and we did something wrong and people found out he knew, there’d be riots. He wouldn’t risk losing his job.”

“Secretly letting students become animagi isn’t enough to do that?” Sawamura asked, gawking at Kuroo.

“Arashi said Nekomata was checking on us. He made sure we were doing it right.”

Bokuto stopped pacing. His breath was heavy and his eyebrows had turn to feathers. “Are we okay?” he asked, voice tight with panic.

“I think so,” Sawamura said, glancing at Kuroo.

“As okay as we’ve ever been this entire year,” Kuroo said.

Sawamura ran a hand over his face, pausing it to pinch at the bridge of his nose. “I just want this to be over.”

“Tonight,” Kuroo said. “Tonight, this ends.”

 

* * *

 

The three of them could not contain themselves as they sat in the western courtyard and watched the storm clouds roll in over the hills. Kuroo was both anxious and excited, a strange mix that made his stomach sour and his heart race in both the best and worst of ways. Sawamura seemed to be in a similar state, while Bokuto was so enthusiastic he could not keep still.

Bokuto changed his spot every few minutes before squatting down, knees pressed together in a way that had to be uncomfortable, and placed his hands on his knees. He looked like a crouched bird. His eyebrows changed to feathers an hour after dinner.

Their potions sat safely in their pockets, protected with any number of charms. They had come so far and didn’t want to lose it all to a broken bottle. a

The wind came before the rain, and the rain before the thunder, and the thunder before the lightning. The wind was cool on their faces but a charm kept the water out of their way. They lit their wands as the sun set and the clouds rolled over the stars and moon, blanketing the grounds in darkness.

Kuroo’s eyes were glued to the horizon for the first appearance of lighting. The book said the lighting had to strike within a kilometer or the spell wouldn’t work.

They heard the low rumble of thunder and Kuroo shivered in the cold. Light sparked in the far distance, but only Kuroo seemed to notice it. The storm was still too far it, but it was coming and it was coming past.

The rain picked up, pounding against the cobblestones, yet their repellant charms held strong. Puddles of water cracked under the onslaught, making it seem as though the water was bouncing up from the ground.

“Should we move away from the castle?” Sawamura asked. “Just in case someone is out of bed?”

“Good idea,” Kuroo said.

They kept their charms up and walked against the cool wind, which made it through their charms and pushed at their robes, billowing them out. The storm was fierce, the wind so strong it felt hard to move. Mud sloshed under their feet and young spring leaves were ripped off the trees.

Without their wands, they wouldn’t be able to see five feet in front of them, which was just about all the light from their wands could manage.

They found themselves under an old oak tree—“Just go up and check to make sure it’s not the Whomping Willow, Sawamura,” Bokuto said; Sawamura replied, “The Whomping Willow is on the other side of the castle!”

They stood under the oak tree, Bokuto crouching down like before. Their spells did not stop the water from puddling down around their feet or soaking through their shoes, but it didn’t really matter to them.

A roll of thunder cracked in the distance and lighting struck brightly. Kuroo could have sworn he heard them all inhale at the same time, though he knew it was impossible. The rain and wind were far too loud.

“How far away was that?” Bokuto asked.

“Not close enough,” Kuroo said.

“You’re sure?”

Kuroo nodded.

“Just a bit longer,” Sawamura agreed, his hand flexing around his wand.

Kuroo wrapped his arms around himself, not wanting to add a heating charm to their mix of spells, no matter how cold he was. Maybe he’d be a dragon and could breathe fire to warm himself up.

A flash of light in the corner of their eyes had their heads whipping to the side, watching lightning strike down.

“That had to be close enough,” Bokuto said, rising up.

“I think so,” Sawamura agreed.

Kuroo exhaled. “Let’s do this.”

They removed their protective charms, the fat raindrops hitting them hard, the wind only making it worse. Kuroo felt soaked almost instantly. His fringe matted to his forehead while Sawamura held a hand up to attempt to block the rivets of water flowing into his eyes.

Bokuto looked between them nervously. “Are you guys really—“

“We’re sure,” Sawamura cut in, voice steady and strong.

Bokuto nodded.

Kuroo and Sawamura took out the bottles with the last of the potion. Once they drank it, they had to immediately cast the spell.

Best case scenario, they transformed into their animagi forms and could transform back into a human.

Worst case scenario, they were disfigured for life, if they had a life to live at all.

“Together,” Sawamura said, meeting Kuroo’s gaze.

“Or not at all,” Kuroo replied with a wicked grin.

Kuroo held up his bottle, which Sawamura clinked his against in cheers, and they tossed back the thick, vile potion until not a single drop remained.

Kuroo fought the urge to retch and expel the vile potion from his stomach. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the first time when they had to drink nearly an entire cauldron. Now, it was only a cup, and the sharp smack of rain on his face made it much more bearable for some reason. It still tasted like rot.

Sawamura finished first, though Kuroo was quick to follow.

They looked at Bokuto, who nodded in resolve, muttered a few words to himself, and then began to count down: “Three, two, one—“

Together, Kuroo and Sawamura waved their wands in an intricate pattern and cast the spell as lightning struck down in the woods.

“ _Amato animo animato animagus_.”

There was a brief second before anything happened.

Then, suddenly, Kuroo dropped to his hands and knees, his back arching away from the ground. There was no pain, just a sensation of awareness of his bones, of his skin, and of his layers of muscles and nerves. He felt his body from the inside out, felt the breath in his lungs and blood in his veins and even the thoughts racing in his mind.

Just like that, he transformed.

He was surrounded by blackness and something heavy and wet, struggling against it. He heard Bokuto’s muffled cursing then felt the heavy object—his robes, he realized—lift off of him. He crawled out from under his robes in a hurry.

He looked up at Bokuto, his vision suddenly clear in the dark night, and blinked.

He knew immediately that he was a cat. He didn’t know what kind, but he knew in a way that he could not explain.

He looked down at his paws against the wet grass. He knew how to push out his claws without learning, he knew how to run on four legs instead of two, and he knew where his new animal body was. He felt comfortable and whole and so much more than human.

Bokuto howled with laughter as walked over to Sawamura’s pile of wet robes, where Sawamura was still trapped, rustling against the heavy, wet fabric.

Bokuto choked with laughter, barely able to speak. “We forgot—Merlin—all the times this happened to me and we forgot—we forgot the fucking spell!”

They forgot the spell that allowed their clothes to transfigure with them, the one Bokuto used so when he transformed back into a human he was not naked in some forest.

After all these months of careful planning, of remembering the smallest detail, they forget the simple spell.

Bokuto carefully peeled back the robes that surrounded Sawamura, who had to be a small creature like Kuroo if he was stuck underneath them. At least Sawamura was not a massive bear that would have destroyed his clothes, or he would have a hell of a time walking into Gryffindor Tower, naked and soaking wet. He was sure Michimiya would love that.

Bokuto ended up reaching in through the neck of Sawamura’s clothes, clasping Sawamura in his hands, and pulling him out.

A crow.

Sawamura was a _crow._

Bokuto held Sawamura’s black wings against his sides as he turned him from side to side, grinning widely. Bokuto looked like a child on Christmas morning, or like Kenma getting a new game.

“Can you guys understand me?” Bokuto asked, looking back over at Kuroo. “’Cause when I’m an owl, I have my human intelligence so I can understand you guys, but I have a bit more to my thoughts. Like, animal intelligence, I guess? I can sense feelings and I know when to run away from something dangerous.”

Sawamura poked at Bokuto with his beak. Bokuto quickly set him down and rubbed his hand.

Sawamura cawed.

“Is that a yes?” Bokuto asked.

Another caw.

“I’m taking that as yes,” Bokuto said dubiously.

Kuroo walked over, his tail flicking behind him. He nudged against Sawamura, who ran his beak gently along Kuroo’s side. They circled each other, Kuroo walking and Sawamura hopping.

The rain was making it hard to smell, but he could already tell the sense was stronger as a cat than a human. The rain was so much more intense, heavier in a way, pushing his fur in all the wrong ways.

Bokuto reached over and ran a muddy hand along Kuroo’s head and down his spine. Kuroo purred, which was a weird feeling, like a buzzing in his chest. When Bokuto reached down to repeat the motion, he pressed his head up against his palm, enjoying the sensation.

Then, Sawamura opened up his wings. The strong wind whipped Sawamura, who was much lighter and apparently much more aerodynamic, out of eyesight in an instant.

Bokuto scrambled and waved his wand, sending a ball of light in the direction Sawamura had just flown. Only the ball of light did not see a bird, but the human Sawamura, who must have transformed back into a human as he was whipped away. The Gryffindor sat on the ground nearly fifteen feet away, stark naked, his eyes wide.

“I’m a crow!” Sawamura shouted. “I’m naked and I’m a crow!”

Bokuto shouted back, “Yeah!”

Sawamura stood up, covering his crotch in his hands, and Kuroo merely had to think before he too transformed back into a human, standing naked as the day he was born with mud all over his body.

They had done it. They had transformed. They were not stuck between human and animal, they were both.

They were animagi.

Kuroo looked back at Sawamura, who was still jogging over, junk in hand.

Kuroo laughed, dropping down to his knees. “Just summon them!”

“If my clothes didn’t transfigure with me, what makes you think my wand did?” Sawamura ran the rest of the way, kneeling next to his clothes, which he hurriedly used to cover his nakedness.

“Holy shit,” Kuroo said, still in shock.

The storm continued around them, but they could not be bothered.

“What kind of cat was I?” Kuroo asked.

“A black cat,” Sawamura said. “Not like a jaguar or anything, just a bit bigger than a normal house cat.”

Kuroo grinned. “Wicked.”

Bokuto was bouncing. His hair was long since matted down by the rain, hanging limp along his face.

“You could tell you were a cat?” Bokuto asked.

“Just knew,” Kuroo said. “Like it was a part of me.”

Bokuto nodded eagerly then looked at Sawamura, who was wide-eyed. “Me too. I just knew. I did _not_ expect to get sent flying like that, though.”

Bokuto laughed. “It’s happened to me more than once.”

Sawamura’s eyes lit up like he just realized something. “I’m going to be able to fly with you!”

“And I can hunt,” Kuroo said, grinning.

Bokuto dropped to his knees in the mud, tossed an arm around each of them, and tackled them into the mud in a massive hug.

“I’m so glad you’re both okay,” Bokuto said, his body trembling, either from the cold or emotions, perhaps both. “Thank you for doing this for me.”

“Not to ruin the moment, but we are literally naked in the freezing rain with lightning overhead,” Sawamura said. Then, he laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. “We never went on rounds!”

Kuroo tossed an arm around Bokuto and hugged him back. He said, “It’d be a shame if someone got up to no good while we were preoccupied.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wish I could have made this chapter longer, but I liked the way the chapter ended and all of the sub-plots were pretty much wrapped up at this point so I decided to better leave it short than add more scenes that don't really contribute anything to the story. The next chapter is like that too. It's more of an epilogue than a final chapter. 
> 
> Arashi was initially going to be a love interest of Kuroo's, but I scrapped that idea. Instead he existed to further the plot--getting ingredients, bringing out Kenma and Kuroo's friendship, the secret Midnight Quidditch Cup, etc. But I couldn't just ignore how clever and sly he was, so of course he had to know all along and so did Nekomata.


	10. Chapter 10

Sawamura and Kuroo finally understood what it was like for Bokuto, who had human consciousness as an animal as well as animal instincts. They finally understood how Bokuto felt—more than human.

At night, they snuck out of the stone corridors and transformed. Kuroo ran through the grass towards the forest while Sawamura and Bokuto flew overhead. Kuroo seemed to disappear into the grass when he stayed still, a perfect hunter on the ground.

They took turns hunting each other in the dark of night, turning into humans and laughing when they were caught, rolling around like animals and shoving each other into the dirt. More often than not, they returned to the castle covered in dirt and scratches, pushing at each other like they didn’t want their playful hunts to end.

Bokuto never wanted any of it to end.

But they had exams and Bokuto finally had to buckle down and study. Fifth years were given a break from classes the week before the exams to rest, but Bokuto spent it in the library with Shirofuku, or Kuroo and Sawamura. His notes were covered in chocolate and drool from when he fell asleep.

He should have started studying sooner.

And then exams came and there was nothing he could do but sit in a chair for several hours a door, scribbling everything he knew about inferi, polyjuice potion, and the many gnome rebellions throughout history.

In the afternoon, they had their practical exams, making pineapples to fly and dance for Charms, reading tea leaves and tarot cards for Divination, and turning rabbits into bouncy balls for Transfiguration (Bokuto’s still had fur, unfortunately).

Sawamura seemed to resign himself to a constant state of exhaustion. Michimiya gave him a steady supply of invigoration draught, which kept him in a zombie-like state, but at least he was awake.

Kuroo was in a constant fit of panic over the exams, especially after he refused to do the jinx in their practical for Defense Against the Dark Arts. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days and the space under his nails was probably close to being stained forever with ink.

“You’ll probably just get an E instead of an O,” Sawamura said reassuringly. “Defense is your best subject. I’m sure nailed the written portion.”

“I looked over and you were still writing when they charmed our essays away,” Bokuto said. “I didn’t think you could write so much about inferi!”

Kuroo tossed his head back and groaned. “I just want to lay in the sun.”

Bokuto laughed. Sawamura patted him on the back sympathetically and Kuroo made a strange face that made Bokuto laugh even harder.

Ever since becoming animagi, Kuroo enjoyed the patches of sun more than ever, lying on his back and stretching out, and he fell asleep in the most random of places during the day when he wasn’t panicking about which OWL he had that afternoon.

Sawamura had gained a keen eye for things that sparkled, staring at Michimiya’s hair clips and loose sickles that lay on the floor of the Great Hall; he would have to start a box like Bokuto’s.

Finally, the end of exam week had come, and Bokuto stretched his hands far above his head as they left the classroom. They had just finished their written Transfiguration OWL, the last they had.

Kuroo looked ten seconds away from lying down and sleeping on the floor, even if it meant being trampled. Sawamura came up from behind and tossed an arm around each of their shoulders, causing both Bokuto and Kuroo to break out into enormous grins.

“We did it,” Sawamura said. “We’re done OWLs—for better or for worse.”

Bokuto and Kuroo shouted, earning a few tired but enthusiastic shouts from other fifth years around them.

“Did you guys like question ten?” Kuroo asked.

“Loved it,” Bokuto said, grinning.

“Give five differences between a werewolf and an animagi,” Sawamura said, nodding slightly. “Great question. I think I managed to get all of them. One, werewolves did not sneak into the restricted section this year.”

“Two,” Kuroo said, lifting up two fingers, “there are animagi in this room but no werewolves.”

“Three,” Bokuto went on, smile so wide it physically hurt, “their names are Sawamura Daichi and Kuroo Tetsurou.”

The three of them laughed.

“Not quite sure why werewolves were mentioned in Transfiguration and not Defense Against the Dark Arts, though,” Sawamura said as an after thought. “I guess it’s assumed we knew that from Defense.”

“I’m just glad to be done,” Kuroo said, tossing his head back against Sawamura’s arm. “I think I’ve had too many invigoration draughts for it to be safe.”

“More than me?” Sawamura asked.

“I started seeing double during that exam.”

“Seriously?” Bokuto asked.

Kuroo nodded. “I had three exams yesterday—Arithmancy in morning, Ancient Runes in the afternoon, and Astronomy at night. I didn’t get any sleep before this one.”

“How are you alive?” Bokuto asked in awe.

“Not sure if I am,” Kuroo replied.

They made their way to the Great Hall for lunch, where they promptly collapsed at the end of the Gryffindor table. There was no one else there, only a few bowls and plates of food, which they were too tired to reach for. Bokuto debated summoning them over, pushing his face into a basket of rolls, and picking up his food with his mouth like a dog.

“You guys up to adventuring tonight?” Bokuto asked.

They had promised to wait for the end of exams to get up to any more trouble. Now that they were all finished, Bokuto was eager to stretch his wings.

Kuroo and Sawamura smiled at him through their exhaustion.

“I could use a bit of mischief,” Kuroo said lightly.

“As long as I get a nap before hand,” Sawamura said seriously. “Otherwise you’ll have a sleeping crow to deal with.”

It was the eve of long, hot summer nights and Bokuto had never felt more reckless and stupid and normal and alive.

They already planned to visit each other over break. Sugawara would be there cracking jokes at Sawamura’s expense until their throats were hoarse with laughter. Maybe they’d go to Kuroo’s and go skinny-dipping in that big lake again. They could steal liquor form their parents and drink and set off fireworks in that field by Sawamura’s house.

They had all summer, and school in the fall, and all the summers and years to come. They had all the time in the world but Bokuto couldn’t wait.

He had never been more thankful for his feathery little problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you made it this far, thank you for reading! I'd really appreciate any feedback :)
> 
> This fic was named after "The Crooked Kind" by Radical Face. I also listened to "Always Gold" a lot since those two songs sort of go together. To me, The Crooked Kind is a song about being ashamed of who you and where you come from, and Always Gold is a song about brothers and always being there for each other. I could go into great detail about how those two songs represent this trio and are the inspiration for their relationship in this fic, but I think you should go listen for yourself and check out the lyrics. They're great songs. 
> 
> As for the future of this series... I'm going to tentatively call this series done. I would love to write King of the Pitch, but I just can't find it in me to write Hinata. Other than King of the Pitch, anything I add to the series will be a one-shot. If I never write another fic for this series, I wanted to thank you all for reading what bits and pieces you have. It means a lot that people would be interested in this little AU that got a lot bigger and a lot more complicated than I ever planned :)


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